March 11, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

We use it to make data-driven decisions. So this is very important work that we're heading into for the next two months almost. And then finally, we continue to work to engage our community with Prop O. Our goal is really to make sure all of our community is very well informed as they head into April 7th to make their decision. We've had coffee conversations. We have one March 24th at the center of Clayton. We already had one. This is this will be our second one where any community member can come in and learn or ask questions. And then we've had Glenridge tours. We've already had one we're having and we had one earlier today I could not attend it but I know some some board members went so we appreciate that. And I think that was the largest turnout we've had so far. We had like almost 12 community members coming and learning about the needs firsthand. So that's good. And then school events are ongoing. We have a lot of parent-teacher conferences this week, so we're trying to be as visible as possible, having tables set up, information out there for anyone who has questions just to stop by and be well informed. So that is our goal. So we will continue to do work on that. And then finally tonight we have two presentations. We have the social studies presentation where they're going to propose their long range goals. For the social studies curriculum, Paul Hilscher and Dr. Milena Garganigo will be here. And then we also have the text study. And so Luke and Milena will be presenting information about that. So it's going to be a fun-filled evening. And now I'm going to transition right away to recognizing our own. And I'm going to make it super official. And I'm go to the mic and stand there because I've written out some stuff that I actually want to read tonight so I don't miss a step. So I'm going to walk over there. So hold tight. I'm assuming this is working so here we go okay Good evening. Tonight we have a chance to recognize and thank our Board of Education for the time and dedication you give to our schools and community as part of the Missouri School Boards Association Month. Serving on the board is a volunteer role and we know that takes a lot of your time thought and leadership. We're incredibly grateful for the ways you support our students staff and family. As you can see, each of the buildings and the athletic department has put a collection of items for you as just a small token of appreciation. So that's on behalf of all of us for you. And then also in your baskets, there are cards that our students wrote. And as tradition, I always like to pick out a few and read them to you. So I have three that I'm going to read out to you. They're adorable. Okay, the first one, it says, Dear Clayton School Board Member, thank you for supporting students you do a pretty good job keep keep at it the next one thank you for supporting our schools helping with funds and supporting our education i hope that you enjoy this card and you like all of my drawings so you have illustrations And it says, I don't know what you really do. But without you, my education would not be the same. You, underlined, push and make it better. And in parentheses, it says, do you get snacks? You do. You do. They do. They do And then the student says, I have an awesome school district and school, but you make it, underlined, even better. And so thank you for everything. And that happens every single day. I love school. Isn't that great? I know. I love it. Isn't that just adorable? Okay. And the last one. It says, dear school board, thank you for using up your personal time to to keep this school alive. You help all of us learn, you make a difference. Thank you again for keeping this school alive. So that is on behalf of the students. And then finally we, not finally, but the next we have a short video which is like two minutes just to show you our appreciation again. It's on the screen.

We use it to make data-driven decisions. So this is very important work that we're heading into for the next two months almost. And then finally, we continue to work to engage our community with Prop O. Our goal is really to make sure all of our community is very well informed as they head into April 7th to make their decision. We've had coffee conversations. We have one March 24th at the center of Clayton. We already had one. This is this will be our second one where any community member can come in and learn or ask questions. And then we've had Glenridge tours. We've already had one we're having and we had one earlier today I could not attend it but I know some some board members went so we appreciate that. And I think that was the largest turnout we've had so far. We had like almost 12 community members coming and learning about the needs firsthand. So that's good. And then school events are ongoing. We have a lot of parent-teacher conferences this week, so we're trying to be as visible as possible, having tables set up, information out there for anyone who has questions just to stop by and be well informed. So that is our goal. So we will continue to do work on that. And then finally tonight we have two presentations. We have the social studies presentation where they're going to propose their long range goals. For the social studies curriculum, Paul Hilscher and Dr. Garganego will be here. And then we also have the text study. And so Luke and Milena will be presenting information about that. So it's going to be a fun-filled evening. And now I'm going to transition right away to recognizing our own. And I'm going to make it super official. And I'm go to the mic and stand there because I've written out some stuff that I actually want to read tonight so I don't miss a step. So I'm going to walk over there. So hold tight. I'm assuming this is working so here we go okay Good evening. Tonight we have a chance to recognize and thank our Board of Education for the time and dedication you give to our schools and community as part of the Missouri School Boards Association Month. Serving on the board is a volunteer role and we know that takes a lot of your time thought and leadership. We're incredibly grateful for the ways you support our students staff and family. As you can see, each of the buildings and the athletic department has put a collection of items for you as just a small token of appreciation. So that's on behalf of all of us for you. And then also in your baskets, there are cards that our students wrote. And as tradition, I always like to pick out a few and read them to you. So I have three that I'm going to read out to you. They're adorable. Okay, the first one, it says, Dear Clayton School Board Member, thank you for supporting students you do a pretty good job keep keep at it the next one thank you for supporting our schools helping with funds and supporting our education i hope that you enjoy this card and you like all of my drawings so you have illustrations And it says, I don't know what you really do. But without you, my education would not be the same. You, underlined, push and make it better. And in parentheses, it says, do you get snacks? You do. You do. They do. They do And then the student says, I have an awesome school district and school, but you make it, underlined, even better. And so thank you for everything. And that happens every single day. I love school. Isn't that great? I know. I love it. Isn't that just adorable? Okay. And the last one. It says, dear school board, thank you for using up your personal time to to keep this school alive. You help all of us learn, you make a difference. Thank you again for keeping this school alive. So that is on behalf of the students. And then finally we, not finally, but the next we have a short video which is like two minutes just to show you our appreciation again. It's on the screen.

I think they're an organization that meets, I believe, on every other Tuesday. I have absolutely no idea. I think the school board gives us all the materials we need for school. Maybe the board that votes on which teachers they're hiring and what to put in the school curriculum. I think

that in their meetings they talk about how they can make the school district even better than it already is, but that might not be possible because I honestly think it's one of the best districts in Missouri. I would vote on giving every single class a pizza party every Friday.

Swap weekends and school days. Making lunch food better.

We all watch Harry Potter.

Thank you, Board of Education, for all of the countless hours you put in to serve our Clayton students and our broader Clayton community.

Thank you, board of education, for volunteering your time. We really appreciate the support of all of our Clayton students.

We appreciate you. Thank you, dad, for your service on the board. I appreciate and love you, dad. Happy Board Appreciation Month.

So again, whether our students realize it or not, you do an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to support this district and we are deeply grateful for your service. So a heartfelt thank you to each of you in your roles. Tonight also marks the final board meeting for Stacy Siwak and Kim Hurst. and I would remiss not to reflect on some of the progress our district has made during their time on the board. Stacy, you joined the board in 2019 after many years of service to Clayton as both a parent and a community volunteer. As a former educator, you consistently kept students at the center of every conversation and reminded us of our shared responsibility to ensure Clayton remains a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. Kim you joined the board in 2020 though your commitment to Clayton began earlier through your service on the district's finance committee and your support of community efforts such as Prop E. Throughout your tenure as treasurer and vice president you remained a strong steward of the district's financial health and helped ensure our decisions were again grounded on what's best for our students. As a student who wrote a card a few years ago said thanks for taking care of the money. We appreciate you together you Stacey and Kim have helped lead Clayton through moments of both progress and challenge, allow me to share some of those highlights. During our tenure alone or during my tenure alone with you, you supported and guided the implementation of our strategic plan and the profile of the Clayton graduate soon to be called profile of the clayton learner. made important investments in safety and security, including the addition of a third school resource officer, the creation of a director of safety and security position, and improvements in safety infrastructure across all of our buildings. You also supported the development of a wellness center, which is one of a kind in the state of Missouri and a key resource to support our students' mental health and well-being. You helped guide the renovation of Clayton High School Library, which has become a vibrant hub for all of our students. And if you ask our students, it is the place to be. Your leadership also helped guide important policy work and long-term planning, including the two-year tech study that we are going to hear about later this evening. Let's also recognize your impact on the fine arts. Through your support our programs continue to grow from new chamber orchestra and choir opportunities at Wydown to expanding choir and visual arts offerings at Clayton High School. And not to mention all of our theater programs that continue to engage students and both onstage and offstage. Your tenure has also been marked by significant academic progress. In our classrooms, you supported strong instruction first through expanded phonics in K-5, rewritten elementary social studies curriculum, and the adoption of K-8 math resources. You strengthened student support systems through MTSS and tools like Educlimber while deepening our social emotional learning work around character strong. or with character strong. And you championed innovation through partnerships like MySci with WashU, programs like AMPT and Geometry in Construction, and real-world learning opportunities like Global STEM Squads. Because of your support, Clayton High School has also reached the highest level of student participation in AP coursework and exams ever, with 947 tests administered with a 91% pass rating. And let's not forget your support of our athletic programs. Clayton has won 10 state championships in the past 80 years, 10 in 80 years. Remarkably, eight of the 10 have been in the past four years. That's right. That is exactly right. That's true. You also helped guide the district through some... True. It is, it is. You also helped guide the district through some incredibly difficult and unexpected moments like navigating the pandemic, engaging in complex community conversations around Calaris, and most recently leading us through the May 2025 tornado. In each of these moments, your steady leadership helped our district move forward and emerge even stronger as a community. And now, as your service comes to a close, you leave us in the midst of another important chapter. Your thoughtful work over the past two years on the Long Range Facilities Master Plan has helped bring us to a moment we now are in, Prop O. On a personal note, Both of you were part of a board that hired me as a superintendent. Your trust support and confidence in me have meant more than I can fully express. You pushed me when needed and supported me every step of the way. Not many superintendents can say that and I stand here proudly as someone who can. You truly mean the world to me and I sincerely hope the relationships we have built will continue long after your service on the board. Thank you for everything. Everybody can get a group. Oh, my gracious.

So again, whether our students realize it or not, you do an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to support this district and we are deeply grateful for your service. So a heartfelt thank you to each of you in your roles. Tonight also marks the final board meeting for Stacey Siwak and Kim Hurst. and I would remiss not to reflect on some of the progress our district has made during their time on the board. Stacy, you joined the board in 2019 after many years of service to Clayton as both a parent and a community volunteer. As a former educator, you consistently kept students at the center of every conversation and reminded us of our shared responsibility to ensure Clayton remains a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. Kim you joined the board in 2020 though your commitment to Clayton began earlier through your service on the district's finance committee and your support of community efforts such as Prop E. Throughout your tenure as treasurer and vice president you remained a strong steward of the district's financial health and helped ensure our decisions were again grounded on what's best for our students. As a student who wrote a card a few years ago said thanks for taking care of the money. We appreciate you together you Stacey and Kim have helped lead Clayton through moments of both progress and challenge, allow me to share some of those highlights. During our tenure alone or during my tenure alone with you, you supported and guided the implementation of our strategic plan and the profile of the Clayton graduate soon to be called profile of the clayton learner. made important investments in safety and security, including the addition of a third school resource officer, the creation of a director of safety and security position, and improvements in safety infrastructure across all of our buildings. You also supported the development of a wellness center, which is one of a kind in the state of Missouri and a key resource to support our students' mental health and well-being. You helped guide the renovation of Clayton High School Library, which has become a vibrant hub for all of our students. And if you ask our students, it is the place to be. Your leadership also helped guide important policy work and long-term planning, including the two-year tech study that we are going to hear about later this evening. Let's also recognize your impact on the fine arts. Through your support our programs continue to grow from new chamber orchestra and choir opportunities at Wydown to expanding choir and visual arts offerings at Clayton High School. And not to mention all of our theater programs that continue to engage students and both onstage and offstage. Your tenure has also been marked by significant academic progress. In our classrooms, you supported strong instruction first through expanded phonics in K-5, rewritten elementary social studies curriculum, and the adoption of K-8 math resources. You strengthened student support systems through MTSS and tools like Educlimber while deepening our social emotional learning work around character strong. or with character strong. And you championed innovation through partnerships like MySci with WashU, programs like AMPT and Geometry in Construction, and real-world learning opportunities like Global STEM Squads. Because of your support, Clayton High School has also reached the highest level of student participation in AP coursework and exams ever, with 947 tests administered with a 91% pass rating. And let's not forget your support of our athletic programs. Clayton has won 10 state championships in the past 80 years, 10 in 80 years. Remarkably, eight of the 10 have been in the past four years. That's right. That is exactly right. That's true. You also helped guide the district through some... True. It is, it is. You also helped guide the district through some incredibly difficult and unexpected moments like navigating the pandemic, engaging in complex community conversations around Calaris, and most recently leading us through the May 2025 tornado. In each of these moments, your steady leadership helped our district move forward and emerge even stronger as a community. And now, as your service comes to a close, you leave us in the midst of another important chapter. Your thoughtful work over the past two years on the Long Range Facilities Master Plan has helped bring us to a moment we now are in, Prop O. On a personal note, Both of you were part of a board that hired me as a superintendent. Your trust support and confidence in me have meant more than I can fully express. You pushed me when needed and supported me every step of the way. Not many superintendents can say that and I stand here proudly as someone who can. You truly mean the world to me and I sincerely hope the relationships we have built will continue long after your service on the board. Thank you for everything. Everybody can get a group. Oh, my gracious.

Well, since it's my last official board meeting, I wrote up a little something too. So good evening, everyone. I've heard it said that serving on a school board is like being a parent. Now I need to put on my glasses though. But with 2,500 more kids and significantly more paperwork. I will miss the camaraderie, but I admit I'm looking forward to being demoted to civilian status. I'll start by thanking my family. I see that Molly is here. Welcome back for spring break, Molly. Serving on the school board does involve a little bit of time away from family, and I want to thank them for supporting me the last six years that I've served here. Every board member has an equal position, regardless of whether they are designated officer. Vice president, though, might have been my favorite officer position. All the prestige without the public comment death stares at the president endures. The treasurer's job is to ensure the district finances are secure. I've been treasurer for half of my time on the board. John, who is also about to retire for the second time as a CFO of his school district. I want to sincerely thank you and the entire finance and accounting team for being my partners in fiscal crime fighting. There's a fair degree of complexity when it comes to public school finances, but John and I leave you with balanced statements, clean audits, and a robust fund balance that we expect our incoming CFO and future board treasurer to guard like dragons protecting a hoard of gold. So it's been an honor to serve with everyone who's been at this table past and present, and I see Frank Hackman is in the audience today too, who care enough to spend their time never losing sight of the true bottom line, which is our students and the community we all call home. I'm confident that the new board members who will be sworn in next month will work closely with you, Nisha, to ensure Clayton remains a top school district for academics, the arts, athletics, and the long list of things our very accomplished students are recognized for long after I'm gone. That includes you as a student rep, by the way, and all the other very accomplished student reps that have sat here at the table with us. And last but not least, thank you to everyone who cast a vote for me and put me here six years ago. I'm walking away with fond memories and immense pride in what we built together.

Okay, that was really nice and hard to follow. But I also wrote a few words like Kim said. Although my term as a board member is not yet officially over and will definitely not be over until at least April 8th, and we still have a lot of work to do, this is our last public meeting or my last public meeting so I would like to say just a few words reflecting on my time in this role. As Nisha said, I was elected in 2019 which was on the same ballot as Prop E. And as Leo so eloquently pointed out to me, concluding my time on the board with the very hopeful passing of Prop O would make the perfect bookends to my board tenure. At my very first board meeting in 2019, my very first vote was to approve adding a student representative to the school board and I'll never forget it. Ensuring that student voice is part of our discussions has been one of the most meaningful aspects of this work for me. It feels fitting that tonight we are voting to amend the student rep policy, which reaffirms our commitment to elevating student perspectives in everything we do, which is another perfect bookend. As many of you know, I began my career as an educator and with a master's degree in school counseling. It has meant so much to me that during my time on this board for the past seven years, we have prioritized both academic excellence and the social emotional wellbeing of our students. It has been the perfect balance that reflects and utilizes my own education and professional experience. I come from a family of public school educators. Both of my parents were teachers, as are both of my sisters-in-law, my brother-in-law my aunt, a few cousins, and my mother-in-law was not only a teacher but also served on the school board in the small Missouri town where my husband grew up. So education is obviously a passion for me and my extended family. Serving on this Board of Education has been a deeply fulfilling extension of my entire family's commitment to education. I am especially grateful to have served alongside each of you, Kim, Jason, Chris, Pam, Leo, Ben, particularly over the past two years during my time as president. Each of you has supported my leadership, challenged my thinking, taught me a lot, and made even the hardest work feel meaningful. And yes, we have fun together too. I am also profoundly grateful to you, Nisha, and your outstanding team of leaders. You are an exceptional leader, both visionary and inspiring, and it's been a true privilege to lead this work alongside you and to witness firsthand the remarkable ways in which you have reimagined education to best serve our students. The past seven years have gone quickly, actually, and have been incredibly rewarding. In many ways, I feel I have received far more from this experience than I have given, but I sincerely hope that our students and staff have benefited from my service. Thank you to Nisha, to my fellow board members, to this entire community, and especially to my family, my daughter who's here tonight, for supporting me in this role over the past seven years. It has been a true honor to serve you. Thank you.

Okay, I'll start. We can't let this meeting go on without also saying something to these two amazing women. I'm gonna try not to get emotional, but probably not gonna work, because Pam's emotional. But we've got a whole meeting. We've got a whole, yeah, exactly. We've got the whole meeting to go, so I'm gonna keep it together. Maybe later when we eat cake again, I'll get into the details of, but I just wanna say that these two women right here incredibly wonderful role models to me personally. And what I love about that is that you're also incredible role models to all the students. I just, I think about that. I think about, you know, if they watch these meetings and if they, if you interact with them, et cetera, you're just fantastic people for our community to know and to be able to be touched by your wisdom and your kindness and your leadership. It's just been phenomenal for me, and like I said, for the whole community. So I will kind of leave it at that for now, but I just want you both to know how much you'll be missed, like so much. It's going to be really, really hard without you guys, but we will do just fine, and only a phone call away, but just know that you're always here with us. You're welcome.

I didn't have anything prepared to say. But no, no, absolutely. That

wasn't prepared either.

All right, you're better at this than I am. I just think there have been some difficult times in the history of this board. And Pam and I came in through a tough race. And this has become a really cohesive, effective board. And I think that's truly a testament to both of you. And I think you handled some things with immense grace, and I really thank you for that. It's very impressive.

Well, I'll go now. Kim got me into this whole mess, first of all. No, seriously. I think both of you have shown myself, I think everyone else at this table, what it really looks like, what excellence as a board member looks like, leadership, expertise, but open to hearing voices and building consensus. So that's really what it's about. So that legacy you guys bring will continue on. I guarantee that. Thank you.

Okay, I wrote well we all wrote each of you more personal notes, so I'll save that for the writing But to let the community all the people listening know as a board we underwent a training and an evaluation of board dynamics and to summarize the Missouri School Board Association representative who works with boards said that we were amazing and I mean, that's like the summary. And the reason I'm sharing this here is that it really is the leadership of Stacy and Kim that has brought us to this place. The legacy, you know, the wisdom that you all have shared. cultivated in your six and seven years on the board. And the way that you shared it with us will leave a legacy here. And I truly believe that you too have changed the way that the Clayton School Board will function moving forward. So it's enduring. Thank you.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF. trying to think of something I'll say some other things offline but I just you know in the I'll just say here publicly that you know this is a board and Leo touched on a little bit this is a board that really has gone through a lot of almost like eras shifting if you think about the recent past of the school board to where it was five ten years ago to where it is now you know there's one error and we transition to this era. And as you know, this is a highly functioning board, as the state has told us, you know, as Pam has reminded us, as Leo has said. And without the two of you, I'm not sure where we would still be here just for the record. But I don't know. I don't you know, it's not really clear how effective we would have been. And this is really turned out to be a really great group and leaves a high leaves a high bar for the next folks coming on up. So So thank you guys for that.

Thank you. I have faith in the next ones. So I'm going to turn it over to Nina for our student rep update.

Well, I would also really quickly just like to thank the board. It's been such an honor to work with all of you this year. And I really appreciate all the guidance and support you provided me. You all are such great role models. So yes, thank you so much.

Thank you, Nina.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about the technology studies that we did. So on December 11th, a group of fellow high school students and I from Principal's Advisory Club had the opportunity to review a potential new device for the upcoming school year. The team from Apple was very open and knowledgeable throughout the session. We spent about an hour and a half asking questions, sharing feedback, and exploring the device's features. We had a similar opportunity to evaluate a different device on February 11th. Both sessions were very enjoyable and informative, and the members of the principal's advisory club brought many thoughtful questions and ideas to the discussions. Throughout the process, we had several opportunities to share feedback about the features we felt were most important to a new device. Some of the qualities that were mentioned the most included portability, ideally lighter than our current Chromebooks, the ability to keep multiple tabs open at once, and faster loading speeds and a strong battery life. I had a great time getting to know the team at Apple and working with the amazing students on Principal's Advisory Club. All of them always provide such great feedback and have so many ideas, and I am so excited to hear about what the results will be.

Thanks, Nina. I'm so glad to hear about that experience with the students trying out different devices. Thank you. That's great. OK, now we're moving on to agenda item 5.1, which is Dr. Milena Garganigo and Dr. Helsher in the social studies curriculum.

Thanks, Nina. I'm so glad to hear about that experience with the students trying out different devices. Thank you. That's great. OK, now we're moving on to agenda item 5.1, which is Dr. Garganego and Dr. Helsher in the social studies curriculum.

Good evening. I'd like to first start by introducing a couple of people to you. So first, Dr. Paul Helcher is our social studies coordinator. And when I was reflecting on Paul's retiring this year and when I was reflecting this and he and I have talked about this, he is one of the two coordinators that's that was in place when I took my role. So he and I have been together for a long time He was I remember when I came into this role. He was really integral in helping me adjust to the role and being really willing to be open and help support me in that transition. I also want to say that he's one of the coordinators who really embodies what my philosophy of our teaching and learning team is. So I always say I'm a generalist, and our coordinators are specialists. Paul has some of the deepest content knowledge that I have ever seen. So the work that he does with our teachers, the work that he with our students has just always really impressed me. And I don't claim that I'm a social studies person and so I value his insight and his talent in that area tremendously. I would also say that Paul is somebody who has always pushed my thinking. And so I like to have people on my team who support me, but also who push my thinking to push us to be better. And so as a consequence of Paul's work, he's challenged us to be better, he's had us really think very differently about social studies, particularly over the past couple of years. He's challenged himself also. So things that he wasn't always familiar with, he's put himself into elementary classrooms and helped support not only the content knowledge of the teachers, but teaching the students. And I remember when we first talked about that being a part of his role, he was like, okay. And I think he's done tremendously with that. So Paul is leaving us with a department in really good shape. So thank you publicly for your work. I also want to take this opportunity to introduce Mark Solomon. He's a seventh grade social studies teacher at Wydown and he is taking over as our new social studies coordinator. And so he's inheriting a department in good shape, but I also think we're putting our department into really good hands. Mark is a really strong leader. I've had great opportunity getting to know him both when I was at Y-Down as well as through my work within this role, and I think he's going to take over. And while he has big shoes to fill, I think he's gonna do great in supporting us. So thank you to you all so much. So before we get into the social studies. Okay, before we get into the social studies part of this, I wanna spend a couple minutes because this is the first curriculum review that we're doing this year. So to get us regrounded in what we're doing and what we're talking about. So I always like to start with our profile of a Clayton graduate, soon to be our profile of a clayton learner, because it grounds our work and this is surrounded by our three goals of our CSIP. Tonight, we are gonna focus specifically really on goals one and two within our CSIP. So when we think about the commitment to educational growth for our learners and thinking about the experiences that we provide them in a teaching and learning environment, as well as that idea of ensuring that all of our learners see themselves within the curriculum that we're teaching. So I think as Paul talks through the work that he and his team have been doing, you will see evidence of that work and the equity work within the district. So the overview of our self-study process is that it is a two-year self-study. During that time, we ask the committees and the departments to revise their enduring understandings. So enduring understandings are big ideas that ground the work of that department in that curriculum area. So we ask them to go through and review those and make sure that they still represent what we believe about that content area. They're intended to be long, enduring, pieces of work that really ground us and our work, and allow students to see that learning outside of just the content area. So transferring that learning beyond. We also spend time reviewing the curriculum and the resources that we use in our teaching and learning environment, and we again ask you to re-approve all of that social studies. Tonight it'll be social studies, all of that curriculum. During the first year of the self-study, each department presents to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council to gain input. So you saw in the report the information that we solicited from that subset of parents. And then oftentimes, The team there's a little bit of choice here of what that work looks like but sometimes it includes site visits sometimes it includes surveys or other kinds of input and then data analysis particularly some of the departments when they're coming like English you're going to see a whole lot of data when they come forward social studies we don't have as much of that data. What we're going to ask tonight for the approval is there are long range goals so they'll have four years to implement those long range goals. The financials that are attached to those goals and then like I said a re-approval of the curriculum. So I'm going to hand it over to Paul.

Thank you. I got three quick thank yous, starting with my partner to the right. Melinda has been so supportive in this role and great about communication. She works so many long hours. I can prove it because I get lots of texts at night. I want to thank the committee that I work with. My K-12 committee is a representative from each grade level. And we meet on a monthly basis to go through the board review, but also to consistently assess. So without naming all of them, just an amazing group of teachers that really make it happen. And then lastly, sincerely, and it's not the timing tonight, but I want to thank all of you. Whenever I teach government, this is my 25th year in Clayton, 31 overall. I probably taught government 20 times. We always use Board of Education as an example of a local example of getting involved in your community, right? Not everybody's going to run for a senator, but You can do things in your local community, and the board has always been super supportive of me in social studies. Somebody mentioned eras. I've been through many of those board eras. This is my 18th year in this position. It's my third board report. And so thank you very much for what appears to be a very friendly environment to be able to go through that. Sincerely, though, thank you for your time and the energy that you put into this. I have two kids. They're both in college. They went through the district. I know it's hard to leave kids when you do those sorts of things, and I know that you're doing it for the right reasons. So we'll start here with our enduring understandings. We wrote these in the last board report and then came back to revisit them. In my mind, it's kind of like, what do we believe? What are our main ideas? What are our overarching kind of directions? And so as you read through these, they're a little wordy. There's basically five aspects of social studies. So when you go through each of them, the first one is culture. The second one's really history, then geography, civics and economics. And they may not look all that different than other districts, except for the first three or four words. We've chosen those very, very carefully after much deliberation. So engaged, there was discussion, should this go around? It changed to empowered, but we stuck with engaged. And then global citizen, that in the 21st century, we're preparing kids for an international world. And the word citizen was specifically and deliberately used there as a huge part of public education to get kids involved in citizenship in so many different ways. So I'm going to walk you through and kind of paint a picture here. Six years ago, five years ago, coming off of COVID, I did not intend my last go around to be a major revision. A group of elementary teachers are meeting with me over the summer, which frequently happens. We had great representation from a large group of teachers, diverse group of teachers. And the goal at the time was to revise grades one and two, that we saw a lot of overlap. The teachers were saying there isn't enough challenge. There were some specific economic units that sort of repeated itself the way the Missouri standards were set up. So once we got into this conversation and really got deep into it, we went way beyond just first and second grade. There are really four things that we were thinking. One, a greater alignment to the Missouri standards. We teach the Missouri learning standards but ours were a little bit askew just in terms of how we had done things. And it had been that way since the 1990s. We found that teachers coming into the district from different school districts didn't necessarily match third grade here, third grade there. Secondly, there was consistent feedback from teachers that we wanted more meat, we want more content, we want social studies to not just be a superficial feel-good community sort of thing, but to really push in terms of our thinking. 25 years ago, people said the research said, you know, kids in first grade can't abstractly think about history. We're now teaching a history unit in first grade. It's schools. It's the history of schools. I do little activities of before and after. We have pictures of all the schools from 30 years ago and present. But it's history. It's really the abstract concept of thinking about things from the past. So number one, we wanted to align with the Missouri standards. Number two, we wanted to challenge our students a little bit more. Number three, as mentioned, we had some overlap, but really the heart of this is, you know, this is 2020, 21, 22, the time period of George Floyd and the district had lots of initiatives and conversations structurally hiring black teachers. reducing some barriers to students in AP classes. And I've always felt social studies is really the heart of a lot of that social justice. Why don't we just dive in? Why don't we embrace it? Why don't teach some of that hard history that maybe at times, I know when I was growing up wasn't necessarily taught. So when we think about those kind of four elements, that's where we started making some changes. Kindergarten celebrations is still pretty much the same. The teachers are so responsive to the kids in front of them. The celebrations year to year may look a little differently if there are students that are here from China or from Mexico for different things. We're celebrating cultures and learning a little bit of geography. First grade, like I said, we added a unit in terms of history. Second grade was a pretty big shift, that expanding horizons model. But just as an anecdotal example, not to take too much time, when we said we were gonna do St. Louis, let's really do St. Louis. So we took on a small piece of Mill Creek Valley, an area of St. Louis where we had an African American thriving population that was displaced. we were able to collaborate. I'm a big soccer fan, a soccer coach. We were able to collaborate with St. Louis City, right? Where their stadium is is where Mill Creek was. And so part of their kind of PR campaign, but also part of their history and things like that, we incorporated into second grade. Second graders like myself love soccer. We start going through these sorts of changes, and we realize we didn't want Missouri history in third grade just to be a typical Missouri history. When you look at the Missouri learning standards, they suggest things like Dred Scott. And teachers got together and say, OK, we're supposed to teach Dred Scott, but we haven't taught enslavement. We're supposed to teach Lewis and Clark, but nobody talks about the indigenous peoples. So we're doing Missouri studies in third grade, but we're doing it really from a global perspective. And this is really that influx of the learning for justice standards. So this is basically a framework that says why you do social studies or what are the underlying kind of reasons at a deeper level that get into this. U.S. history in fourth grade, it says 1,000. We go, you know, Cahokia, what a wonderful. The museum, unfortunately, is closed. We haven't gotten there for a couple years, but what a wonderful local resource in terms of starting American history with the people that were here in our backyard. Fifth grade, some big units on civil rights and so forth. So the learning for justice standards really was something that the teachers, myself, and the committee said, this adds a little bit more depth to what we're doing. It's not woke history. It's not revision history. It's our country's history. It's the things that we're looking at. When we got through K-5 and we started to put some pen to paper, then we said, oh, wait a second, hold on. See that fifth through seventh grade sequence? That's really going to kind of be. So we kicked around the idea of another year of U.S. history, maybe review in middle school or something like that, and we saw it as just an amazing opportunity. Most of my background is in non-Western history. I teach the AP World History class here, and so we've got to get something international in there. So people and places is geography, but it's not place geography. It's not the memorization of capitals like we did when we grew up. It's human geography. It's why people move and where people live and those sorts of things. Now keep in mind, we do have some location geography. Very important for me that every sixth grader knows their continents, their oceans, their cardinal directions, all of those things. I'm pretty old school when it comes to the content, but it's really more about cultural exposure. Then when we got to seventh grade, and again this was done kind of in a series of discussions, again we thought what a wonderful opportunity. Massachusetts passed a law and said we need every middle school kid to study civics. I've taught high school government. is high school, I hate to say it, almost too late sometimes, right? To introduce these concepts, to think about civic identity and things like that. A lot of my high school kids kind of say, oh, it's rigged, it's against me. Why would I, you know, that cynicism unfortunately is sort of caked in. Some of that's being a teenager, but we also felt like this was a wonderful opportunity. So we reached out and in each of these we've had help from collaborating partners in different groups, but one in particular, the Democracy Knowledge Project up at Harvard, took on the Massachusetts law and said, OK, if we're going to do this in Massachusetts for eighth graders, let's really, really do it well. They spent five years on this curriculum. We haven't done the whole thing, but we took bits and pieces of what kids are doing in Massachusetts in eighth grade and spread it to our seventh grade students. So that's kind of a little bit of a picture of the changes. When we think about what we're asking you to approve in terms of long-term goals, I basically summarize the first one of those, that we want to align more closely with Missouri learning standards. We're not abandoning that, but we're looking at learning for justice as some of that depth. I'm very, very proud. We had a speaker in third grade the other day, somebody else who came out of Harvard who's working at UMSL right now, and she said, you know, what we should start doing in the future is teaching persons of color in a positive light prior to enslavement. And all the third grade teachers kind of chuckled and laughed, and they raised their hand. They said, we teach the ancient civilization of Benin in third grade. Every K through fifth grade class has an introduction to West African civilizations, different civilizations, so that we can see persons of color in a positive light before we start moving into enslavement and these sorts of things. Moving on to the second goal, which again is elementary and middle school. So many times when districts talk about integrating in literacy, it's the loss of social studies. It's for minutes and social studies kind of gets put by the wayside. We are in some ways the fourth discipline, but my job for the last 18 years is making sure, and Milena has been very supportive and so have all of you, The integration with literacy is not a loss of social studies, it's using literacy skills. If we're going to read nonfiction, let's read nonfiction that lines up exactly with what we're doing already in social studies as opposed to something different and distinct. If we're gonna do some narrative writing, let's do the narrative writing as an assessment of our learning for social studies itself. Whereas the first goal is well in the works, and we really need the next four years to add assessments, and you read about the different things we're hoping to build, that second one is relatively new. We're looking at how we give kids choice still, even when we have common reading assignments, and there are some things that we need to work on as social studies teachers. The third is mostly at the secondary level, and my visual was taken unfortunately out of the slides. I'm very proud of my visual. It's basically a four-part circle. So the inquiry model is kind of the current pedagogical approach to social studies. It's not cutting edge, it's not brand new or anything like that. A lot of things in education just get rebranded. But essentially what we're looking is four parts, and the first is inquiry. How do we get kids to ask good questions? So many times in my education, the teacher stood up and said this is what we're going to learn and this is the way that we're gonna learn it. So we don't do inquiry daily but some units and some days and things like that asking kids to ask good questions. The second piece of that I think is what I'm most proud of and that's the evaluation of sources. So as kids get their information from TikTok and as we have so much on the Internet, it's increasingly significant that we work on media literacy skills. And so that second comes out of Stanford. They have a digital inquiry group, civic education group that now has changed a little bit. But essentially, 6-12, we have three overarching questions that become more and more nuanced by the time you get up to APs. The first question is... You know, what is the source of information? Who's behind it? And so when you think about who's behind it in a primary source document in an AP class, that could be the author. For so much online thing, it's who is putting this information together online? We have exercises where we give kids two websites and they have to dig in and look, right? It may say it's an environmental website, but if you dig a little bit deeper, you realize it's actually funded by an oil company or something. so question number one is who's behind the information question number two i mean those are real things that we you know train kids for question two is what does the evidence say and then three is is is this idea what they call lateral reading what other sources say so the research at stanford suggests that kids and they're talking stanford freshmen spend a majority of their time reading straight through a website and we've all done that click click click click click It's very simple, but it's very powerful. Lateral reading is no more than 10 minutes on a site before you open another tab and you begin checking that information against something else. So the inquiry cycle, and I'm getting detailed because I like this stuff. I apologize if I'm taking so long. The inquiry cycle is question, then evaluate your sources. note-taking still something we need to work on college prep those sorts of things what are we doing for homework what are we doing in class etc and then the last one is is our cer claim evidence reasoning which again is not new but what i'm proud of in this particular goal we started working on is aligning what does that look like a cer in sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade ninth grade tenth grade so we're using common language all the way through cer is used in science it's used in literacy we want to be able to collaborate interdepartmentally or interdisciplinary with this sort of language because really when you think about showing your learning, CER is a major way to be able to get to that particular learning. So the last goal then when we think about that is the impact if we go back The impact that this is going to have on eight, nine and 10 are eight, nine and ten is our world history three year sequence where they do early history. And then kind of ninth grade is up to and including the Civil War, 1877. And then 10th grade is kind of mostly 20th century, 1877 to the present. I love and I'm proud of our integrated approach. In the 90s when we did this, we were one of the only districts that I could find that truly taught U.S. and world history combined. Again, going back to this engaged global citizen. When you look at this, we're not 100% sure. I'm just being honest on what impact that's going to have. We had a lot of discussions coming to you saying, here's 8 through 10. We're just not sure what 8 through 10 is going to look like until these kids matriculate their way through the system. So it looks like on paper they're going to have less US history. So we're going to have to build up some US history and some narrative around that. It looks like, because I'm in the classroom every day, geography and civics is going to be way farther than where it was before. So in some ninth grade units on the American Revolution, maybe we can compact some things or shorten some things. So the fourth goal basically is suggesting that we're going to write assessments. As Melina said, we don't have a lot of state assessments or mandates or things like that to really make sure that we're evaluating at each one of those steps what the kids know, where are the deficits, and then how do we make those changes? To do it at this point, I think would be a little bit premature because we're trying to see once a kid comes through this new sequence. What is it that they've had? Right. Not every fourth or fifth grader is going to remember everything that they have in U.S. history. And like all good curricula, this cycles, this kind of goes through and spirals as we work our way through. So those are our four long-range goals. I've talked about a little bit of this already. How is this going to make us better? Learning for justice provides a deeper, more critical approach. That word critical can be controversial. We're asking kids to really assess the role of Native Americans, of black Americans, of aspects of history that maybe have not necessarily in the past been looked at authentically. Some people, some places call it hard history, that there's challenging aspects of our history that we want to expose kids to and get them to think about. Again, removing the overlap was the initial catalyst when we started doing this. Sixth grade, geography, human context for the world. Seventh grade, I talked a little bit about civics. Mark is a seventh grade teacher. It's not a traditional American government high school class pushed down to seventh grade. It's very much around civic identity issues and student responsibility and engagement. It culminates with a big project where they have to choose something to get involved in their community. Keep going all the way through. I think the literacy integration will help us quite a bit with common language. There's no reason that literacy skills can't be used in similar assignments and such. The inquiry cycle that I'd mentioned before, the four parts, my little diagram that got pulled out of the slides there. Pushing for curiosity. Good, good, good, good. I've been teaching for 31 years, so this is my Canva production right here. I'm very proud of that. You can't teach old people new tricks. Frank's in the audience. I've been around so long, I had Frank's youngest kid, both in class as a sophomore and on the soccer team. Frank's youngest for his Eagle Scout project helped me. We went in on spring break and did a bookshelf together. His son said, hell sure you got a lot of books and you need to be able to put them somewhere. So I just want to shout out to my guy Frank there. thinking about the inquiry cycle again common language argumentative writing claim evidence reasoning and then the last one up there says that uh systemic measurements right so so how do we write assessments where we'll get a really good sense beginning middle and end of eighth grade so that then we're able to make those curricular adjustments I'm not here to make future predictions, but I think what we'll end up seeing is the shift of some time periods, some units, those sorts of things around a little bit to make sure that we have the final product that we want going into 11th and 12th grade and keeping a lot of the APs and those sorts of things there. So closer alignment along the elementary buildings still continues to be a challenge, right? Getting nine teachers on the same page and having the same resources and have field trips and things like that. Collaborating with the literacy committee, Mark will have lots of meetings with Julie and the literacy committee to be able to come together. High school teachers in this eighth through 10th grade kind of assessment have also acknowledged that more students are coming in more than ever into the high school with pretty significant reading needs. And so as... individual as teachers instruct in nonfiction and assign writing and continue to have rigor there we need more training around reading and those sorts of things we don't get a lot of reading training itself and then kind of repetitive but the systemic monitoring of the impact k7 is underway hopefully if you have kids in those grades you hear good things i hear good things from the teachers and the kids in the buildings that i'm in and then we'll come back and kind of monitor that and keep track of what we need to be able to change

So what questions do you have for us?

Thank you. Who would like to start? Go ahead, Leah.

I sent you a couple questions by email, and you gave me an answer. And even though this topic is super near and dear to my heart, and I would love to talk about it more, maybe we don't need to do it in this open meeting. But I do think that nexus between history and civics that American history presents I do think there's room for continued development on that and that's an area of a lot of interest for me.

Yeah. I have to say that reading your 19-ish page report was like so fun. So thank you.

As said by no one ever before.

And I mean it. So great. So I just want to start by saying that I am incredibly impressed by the work that you did, the extensive professional development that you all underwent as collaborations with other school districts and as you spoke about Stanford and all these other places locally and nationally is incredible. You are the reason Clayton is Clayton. Thank you. I love the collaboration that you talk about between literacy and social studies in the elementary and middle schools. I love that you spoke about media literacy something we need so much. I really appreciate your very clear plans for future work and the curricular changes and not rushing into it after making these case seven changes. So I want to just start by saying how incredible. I also asked a lot of questions, and I'm guessing it was you, Dr. Holscher, who directed me to this website, the Educating for American Democracy. And there's one, it was a very long website, and I did the wrong thing. I read the whole website rather than lateral reading.

Don't trust your sources.

But I just wanted to like read one line, one of their bullet points that I just felt like would ground all of us in something beautiful. One of the goals that you are bringing here is to cultivate civic honesty and patriotism that leaves space to both love and critique this country. There's so many good ones, but I just wanted to call it out. OK. So, my questions. As I just said that I appreciate your clear plans and not rushing into new curriculum, I also have concern about not – about the we're just going to wait and see for the eighth and up. And so – Is there something in the meanwhile?

Yeah, 100%. I share your concern. April 7th, we have a PD day and eighth and ninth grade is meeting. Last summer, eighth and ninth grade met to really think about what that change looks like and how that transition. And so there are discussions around student expectations, reading, writing, and then what the curriculum will look like. We have changed one unit already between eighth and ninth grade this last summer for this year. And then this summer, we're going to get back together and kind of look at that. Mark's been on the committee for a long period of time and I'm not trying to cast this off, but I think I share your exact same concern. I mean, if you could go back through PD days, we had multiple plans up and we looked at multiple options. And I didn't, because I was the one who put the proposal, the draft proposal together, I didn't feel comfortable making a huge shift. But you're exactly right. As we see here, we responded to teacher and student needs as soon as we saw those that were evident. And so this year's seventh grade going into eighth grade, immediately we're gonna look at those assessments and figure out what we need to do. I don't know if I call them sticking points, but kind of the areas of deep consideration are do we keep U.S. and world history together, right? That's kind of a unique blend, and it can be difficult at times for kids to think about globally, thematically, comparatively at the exact same time. So that's going to take some deep consideration, assessing kids, surveying kids. In this process, I don't know how much – you write the report, but I don't know what kind of sense you, we brought in former students. We had a full panel of former students and current students. And we asked them, what do you remember? What do you not remember? What do like, what do you dislike? All of those sorts of things to kind of get to what you're saying. So I share your concern and I felt safest with the idea of not making a radical shift until we had a better sense of kids coming through the program, but we're not gonna wait four years to make a change. Those are literally going to be ongoing.

Okay, thank you. I asked this question that like my son who is a sixth grader right never so anybody who's got sixth graders now when they were in fourth grade the US map was taught in fifth grade when they got to fifth grade it was taught in fourth grade and So he doesn't know it. And I'm sure there's other things, and I'm sure you could tell me all of the things that were missed. So I would love to hear how you're going to catch these holes because you know what the holes are, at least some of the holes.

Yeah, so going back, we created some bridge units as we made those changes themselves. So there were many units that are not the same as a full course year, but so many units were created as kids went through that initial transition. In terms of catching those holes, you can have on paper in fourth and fifth grade, we cover these things. But quite honestly, until they get to eighth and ninth grade and getting a sense of what they remember, what they don't remember, how things were covered, we're... I'm currently in a position to try to assess those students right so when we talk about assessments we're talking about tests we're talking about concrete knowledge like place geography like historical presidents those sorts of things to get a sense of where the kids are and then you know, carefully but relatively swiftly make changes as that could be. That could be three years from now divorcing American history from world history. That could be a separate approach if we feel like the U.S. history narrative needs two years to truly get there. Somebody had mentioned, you know, the interaction of civics and history and those sorts of things. So until those kids get through, I don't know if we have, you know, I think it would be Dishonest if I said here's exactly where we're gonna be right so I feel like the the most cautious and the best approach is to Assess those kids write those tests figure out where we are and then make those changes I'm very fortunate K-12 but especially at the secondary level to work with a lot of teachers that have a lot of content background that are well read that Understand their their their history so that we can be relatively agile in making those changes. I

You mentioned in the document the focus groups that you did, and you just referred to them, but you also had some with parents of current students. And talking about this shift from memorizing, like we all did, to, I'm just gonna say your inquiry cycle. And then you also spoke about ninth grade being very content, or at least students in ninth grade having a difficult time in that transition to the heavy content compared to eighth grade. And so I'm curious because I love the value of inquiry, and I also feel like there are some things that need to be memorized. Mm-hmm. Maybe I'm wrong. But I think that's an important skill. Oh, I agree.

Yeah.

And our kids don't memorize much of anything except the multiplication tables. So I'm wondering how do you meld those two?

Mm-hmm.

Because I understand the shift.

Sure, yeah. So the Teaching and Learning Council, I think what you're referring to, the way that we set that up was the initial setup was to reflect on your own social studies education. And I hear constantly, we're doing parent-teacher conferences right now, I hated history and I love it now, right? So what is that? Like, I'm not one for throwing teachers under the bus, but you know what I mean? Like, what happened in those particular classrooms? And I think a lot of people suggest that it was just sit and get and memorization, right? So I totally agree. I'm a content person. I think that there are things that we should know, right? When we have the profile of the graduate or the profile of the student or something like that, my feedback was it doesn't say anybody needs to know who Lincoln was, right? And I support all of the district initiatives, but I'm on that side in terms of content. There are things that kids need to know to be citizens, right, beyond just where to register to vote. In terms of the eighth to ninth grade transition, I think, and I only teach social studies, but I think it's something that's wider than just social studies. So what we're trying to do in our little realm is have the eighth and ninth grade teachers get together as much as possible and close those gaps, right? So eighth grade is a long year. What are the expectations in first semester as opposed to second semester? And how do maybe we beef up a little bit of those second semester expectations so that then when the kids come into ninth grade... This particular group of ninth graders have a lot of reading challenges. And so we're also operating at a time period where the teachers feel like the reading and writing skills, maybe it's COVID, maybe it's 100 other factors. But those are areas that we as social studies teachers, not English teachers, feel responsible also for a huge part of that. So closing that eighth to ninth grade gap, I don't think is anything that's unique necessarily to social studies. But by frequently getting those teachers together, talking to students as they're coming in, the hope is that we can continue to have those really high standards in ninth grade. But at the same time, the compacting of some things or the intensity of ninth grade might need to change a little bit by having less units that that The real curricular challenge, and I don't think this is unique to social studies, is content and skills and how you blend those contents and skills so that kids are prepared. There are very few kids some but there are very few kids that go on to become politicians or city managers or whatever his kid does the majority of us do other things right we're not training historians so the reading and the writing skills are an absolutely essential part of the the content that goes into that and and some of this is curricular but some of it also is making those sorts of adjustments as well

thank you um I guess my final thing is if you could just speak for the whole community to hear about DBQ and the micro DBQ because I think it's wonderful.

Yeah, so DBQ has been around longer than I have. It's the main kind of heart of AP history classes. So our main three history classes are world and US and Euro. There are plenty of other classes like psych and econ and things like that, but that's kind of the traditional basis of a lot of those classes. A DBQ is anywhere from five to eight documents and one question. And what kids have to do is sift through those documents to find patterns, cause and effect, similarity differences, things like that. But... Yeah, exactly. But also, when we go back to sourcing, source those documents. Who's the author? What's the context? What's the purpose? What's the point of view? All of those sorts of elements. So it's really higher level thinking. In the report, the idea of doing the micro DBQs are so that it doesn't have to result in a massive essay. It can be 15 minutes at the start of class where two things are put in front of kids. We're doing more and more visual primary sources at the elementary level. So let's just, I talked about the history lesson. Let's just look at two different pictures and how we could think about and compare those sorts of things. So it's higher order critical thinking around primary and secondary documents that are hopefully getting kids to be able to kind of see patterns in history and be able to analyze information.

Thank you. Sure.

Thank you.

OK, so I think the work is great. I think the revamp that you did, even as you're exiting stage right here along with me, is great. I had a couple of questions. So in order for our students to be engaged global citizens, how are we incorporating current events into the social studies curriculum K through 12? How do you guys do that as a team to make it age appropriate, especially given all the things that we're seeing unfold in history real time today?

Yeah, great question. At the elementary level, sometimes it's what the kids bring up, right? To be real and to be honest, in the world we've lived through in the last 15 years, a lot of times those teachers need to be prepared right there for that kid that comes in and said, I saw this on television, right? So some of that is unscripted, and it's in responding to the needs and the things that kids see in a way that's age appropriate. And our elementary teachers are just masters. I know we said we were focused on the first two, but the social-emotional learning that goes into those things that are essential. As they get to the middle school, it definitely is a little bit more scripted and it's incorporated. Mark is always consistently showing the, what's it called? CNN 10 that there are all kinds of kind of high-paced relatively short six to eight minutes you know and it brings up all kinds of different questions and issues that that are age appropriate the high school we have a current events class but the teachers tend to depending on the class kind of pick and choose when there are spots lunch conversations will often be Did you talk about this? Did you talk about how do we handle those things? Frequently when things come out, I'll shoot out emails and sources the night before so we know that kids are going to come in having questions about Israel, Iran, Venezuela. Sometimes it's where is Venezuela? Teachers have those resources so they may plan a lesson and sometimes it goes in different directions and you have that secondary slide set to say, okay, let's pause for a second. Where's Venezuela? Who is the leader? What happened? And be able to walk those through those things. So I think it's a combination of sometimes it's a consistent approach in a class like civics is very much built into that. And then sometimes it's kind of responding to the news of the day.

And then my other question, I think it's great, by the way, that you're moving civic values up to seventh grade because I agree with you that I think if we wait until high school, it's too late. You know, one thing, I don't know if you guys have thought about this or you think about what happens then after you introduce civics in seventh grade, but I think that there's a civic community give back component that we could really enhance. Mm-hmm. through starting in middle school and through the high school. So a lot of other high schools in our area make that an intentional part of the curriculum. Here, I think in the high school, we don't kind of really see it as intentional until Senior Service Day. And I'll just tell you by observation of participation, that's not really fully participated in. But I think, again, starting that civics lesson in the seventh grade hopefully will increase the participation as you guys are taking this wait and see approach to see then what it looks like for eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. But if there's an opportunity to make a civics day not an optional participation, that's kind of like something for the seniors to do now while the juniors are taking their SAT class, I think, or their SAT exam, I think is when we do it. I think that would just be a suggestion that I would ask that you maybe take into consideration. Because I think it is a big part of, again, becoming that engaged global citizen. And it starts with what we do in our backyards right here. And then the last thing is, as a soccer coach for many years, And you can answer this maybe later. But Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World, The Unlikely Theory of Globalization. It's a great book. Everybody should read it.

Yeah, just to comment real quickly, my heart's in the exact same place. So my teaching career started in the Navajo Reservation, and then I was in the Peace Corps in East Africa. We finished June 2nd, and I'm flying to Malawi to volunteer for the summer. So that community service element is a huge part of what I perceive as the need in SEL, and I think it's a little bit at this point outside of my purview, but I would love to see service learning incorporated more in terms of what we're doing because I think it's just an incredible opportunity for kids. Yeah, Frank Ford's book. I don't know if anybody would comment or whatever. But the thesis essentially is despite globalization and international lenses and things like that, we are all deeply, deeply parochial at heart. And it's being represented by, right? And we have the World Cup coming up and all those sorts of things. But yeah, great book.

Chase? My one question was the current events question, so you did a good job. Thank you for that

comment. And just to go back, because I think I might have missed, like, a really, really good 80-minute traditional lesson also includes some relevancy to today, right? So current events sometimes can be a planned eight minutes at the beginning of class, but often, right, so most of my career I've taught AP history, so, you know, 10th century China is hard to kind of connect, but we try to look at things either at the beginning or the end of class. We used to call it the hook at the beginning, right? Or kind of the wrap up. So a lot of times it's embedded in the lesson itself to be able to kind of make that present day connection.

I think what has clearly come across in the presentation and your comments is the emphasis on critical thinking and not teaching children what to think but how to think and then make decisions for themselves about how they view the world and how they view themselves as a citizen. And if you look at the attributes that we have up here on the board about what makes the profile look Clayton graduate or I guess seem to be a Clayton learner. Yes thank you. You touched on many if not all of those in some way shape or form here tonight so I really appreciate the alignment of where we're going with this district and the thought put into this. So thanks. DIRECTOR

HAMPSON, Thank you. DIRECTOR RANKIN, Ben.

I think one of the things that occurred to me listening to your presentation is the the fact that you mentioned maybe perhaps less in the way of U.S. history, I guess kind of traditional curriculum is interesting because I feel like, at least with a couple of my kids, again, this is just my own experience, revisiting some of the same themes over and over again, I guess. So you're nodding like you're recognizing what I'm talking about. I feel like it kind of sucks the life out of some of that. Um, so I love, I mean, even if it's obviously going to go over certain things based on state standards or other things, but like just doing them differently, you know? So that sounds like that's what's in play. That's, that's very cool. Thank you. Um, the other question I had, and this is kind of just like a tactical, I guess, or maybe, maybe it shows my age. But what about the beloved term paper? I mean, I don't hear much talk about term papers, but I could maybe have just missed it. But I feel like that sometimes, that was a traditional tool, right, in social studies. Is that something that we still do? Because the reason I ask it is around sources and around reading and writing skills, which I think that tie is so critical. We've been talking a lot about that. at this board. So

I really do like this group. This is great. What a great question. I can, I can be here all night. Yes. So, so our traditional term paper, it, What's that? A traditional term paper was at 10th grade, at the end of this consistent sequence. In 11th and 12th grade, kids choose a wide variety of electives. We got 18 different electives and things like that. So we chose 10th grade. And we chose the 20th century class. And so forever in a day, it was pick an event, an idea, or an invention that has changed history. And then you got to go out and get 10 sources, and you write a paper. Anyone imagine the issues with that? Right. In the age of AI, it is almost impossible. Right. So so our 10th grade PLC and I've taught 10th grade for a number of years said we still want everything that you're saying. The inquiry, the sourcing, the complexity of taking a wide variety of sources and then sharing your information. So we went not crazy about this, but we went from the written information. presentation. So an oral presentation a student has to know what they're talking about and use their notes and things like that but in the age of AI it's not something that can be quickly downloaded. Now we've added to some new initiatives that didn't make it into the board report we're trying as much as possible to make connections with WashU so that is launched with some undergrads at WashU coming to our 10th graders to explain their research and how they go about it and how they do it and then our audience for our 10th grade students is WashU kids who come over and then critique their oral presentations and things like that so they're presenting to history majors at WashU I I feel like we're missing out on some of the writing, the written component. But I feel like we are also addressing the reality of AI and still keeping a lot of those integral skills. So when we think about that spiraling of skills, it's that 10th grade that we're hoping the kids have done all of these things, the cycle of inquiry numerous times, doing numerous ways along the way. And so in 10th grade, and I'm proud to say that's a college prep paper. You know what I mean? That's when I went to Dismet Jesuit, that's what we did in English class at the end of 12th grade, right? That level of research to have for our 10th graders, I think is, and I would love to invite you guys when they do that this spring, that it's really pretty impressive.

Thank you so much. Yep.

Chris? I'm really impressed with, I loved, I did. I really enjoyed reading the report. I thought it was fantastic. I really did. I love the feedback you got from parents. I'm so happy to hear that you got it from students too. I love where we're going with this and how the changes you've made are exactly in line, I think, with this profile as well as our values as a district. So I'm very pleased to see that, and I really appreciate your efforts to do it, because I know it's not easy. So way to go on doing that. It was the right thing to do. And the other thing I'll say is one of your recommendations was your last one was you want personalized, individualized inquiry. And it said curiosity leads them to their own sort of pathway. And that's kind of an amazing thing to think about. I think I've thought about that in science, you know, sort of. But to think of it in social studies I think is really powerful too because I do think that we are hoping to build global citizens. And part of that is knowing themselves and what drives them and therefore sort of tapping into that and saying, okay, then go do this with, you know, this is what you can do with that. So I really appreciate that part of what you're doing in a social studies setting. So I also just want to throw out there that I love the electives that you have in social studies. I know that my kids have really enjoyed them. I think it's such a good idea to give them that kind of choice and have different types of – and realizing it all is social studies, but there's so many different aspects of it, and I love that – we offer all of those. Um, I'm assuming we get really good, um, turnout in most of those. Yeah. Okay.

Great. Social studies get more APs than any other discipline by far. Exactly. It wasn't even close.

Right. Because it's just such a nice broad and this, I love that we offer so many, you know, gender studies who knew that we offered that. I didn't know till now, but that's fantastic. You know, um, philosophy we offer right sociology I was trying to say those both at the same time but all of that is just incredible and I'm really happy that our students have the ability to take those types of classes so yeah that's all thank you very much for everything we're sad to see you go thank you for everything you've done for this district thanks yeah

Nina do you have any questions I have Really, really quick thing. So first, I would just like to say that Mr. Solomon's 7th grade social studies class and the CNN 10 is like the sole reason that I'm so interested in current events today. And I still watch CNN 10 every day that I can. So I think that Clayton is doing such a great job of incorporating current events. And then it's – You guys talked about so many amazing learning objectives and something I think is super valuable. Right now in my AP Gov class, my teacher, Ms. Hartman, every day we obviously have our lesson, but on the board she says what our learning objective is and what we should have accomplished by the end of the day, not in the terms of you should know what year this happened, but more like you should be able to identify why this happened or the cause and effect, and I think that's super valuable. And just if there's any way that that could be kind of something that's brought up to other teachers across different grade levels especially, I think that's super helpful just for learners to be able to see like, okay, here's what I want to be able to do by the end of the day. Like here's why I'm doing this, not just like learning all these facts. And then I feel like that also helps with the document-based questions and stuff. That's really helpful for them being able to incorporate what you learned into later projects. But yes, you guys are doing such a great job. History is by far my favorite subject.

I mean, talk about civic engagement.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Nina, I always learn something from you. You always say something so insightful. Thank you. That was great. So I always go last, and inevitably this happens often, but my questions were all answered. So I just want to say I also was fascinated by the presentation and the and what you shared with us ahead of time, I was hanging on every word you said tonight. I really truly find this fascinating and I appreciate so much how thoughtful and intentional these changes were, truly. And I can sense it in your passion, but also it just makes so much sense. And the feedback you got from so many different stakeholders and teachers, I appreciate the thorough way you went about this and the thoughtfulness and the recognition that you're still kind of figuring out there might be some changes that still need to be made. So that flexibility, I also appreciate so much. Thank you for all the work you put into this. I also was going to mention, but Chris did that wasn't in these long range goals, but the choice of social studies courses at our high school to me is like a small college. I am like when anytime I talk to anybody else at another high school and I talk about that, I am so proud of our social studies department and the type of courses we offer. And I think it's, especially special for students who maybe didn't don't do great or don't enjoy studying history in certain ways to pick a specific subject and learn history that way I have one of my own children did not enjoy history but took the sports class and did so well like loved it like got the best grade in social studies he had ever gotten because he was learning it through sports so just as one example so I just I love that for our high schoolers as well so congratulations on your experience Retirement, congratulations to Mr. Solomon for taking over. As we're both retiring, maybe we'll see each other in Nashville. Go Commodores. His daughter goes to school with mine. And I know you guys saw her there this fall too, I think.

At the Mizzou game.

Yeah, at the Mizzou-Vanderbilt game, yeah. Anyway, so maybe we'll see you each other there. But congratulations and thank you. This was so impressive. Thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks. Wasn't that so great? Okay. Oh yeah, we need to read the motion. Oh my God, I totally forgot. Chris, I got all, it was such a fun presentation, I forgot we had to approve it.

I move that we approve the revised social studies review goals, the district-written social studies curriculum, and the financials as outlined in the report. Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay, the motion passes. Congratulations on the new goals. Good work. I think that's the first curriculum review that got applause. Just so you know. So now Dr. Milena Garganigo will be joined by Mr. Heidert to review part, the first year, or the first part of a two-year self-study in technology.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay, the motion passes. Congratulations on the new goals. Good work. I think that's the first curriculum review that got applause. Just so you know. So now Dr. Garganego will be joined by Mr. Heidert to review part, the first year, or the first part of a two-year self-study in technology.

Okay. Like before, we'll start with what grounds our work as a system. So the profile of the Clayton Learner surrounded by our three goals of our CSIP. We've highlighted within goal two sort of where we feel like this falls within our CSIP. And so generally when I talk about goal two, I have educational growth highlighted. Tonight I don't have educational growth highlighted, I have equitable personalized and individualized learning experiences highlighted. So I think as we've engaged in this work around technology, One of the things, Jeff and I used to talk about this, Luke and I continue to talk about this of this philosophy of the purposeful integration of technology in teaching and learning. And that it's not, even though tonight's presentation is a lot about devices, it's really not about devices. It's more about the work that we do with those devices in thinking about our profile of a Clayton learner. as well as our thinking around empowered learning. And so a lot of our focus this year with technology has been how can we use it as a tool to empower students in the work that they're doing within the classroom? So a little bit different from the other self studies that will come to you this spring, we are coming halfway through a study. Yes. So we wanted to make sure that everybody is kind of aware and grounded of why we're coming this early as opposed to having everything sort of tied up in a nice, neat bow for you because it's not tied up in a nicely bow. And you'll find that as we talk through this. But Senate Bill 68 came to fruition I think in the spring last year or in the summer. And the board policy that we talked about, devices and what that was gonna look like. So personal electronic devices at that time. And we made a decision of a one year sort of hiatus of kind of dealing with students bringing their own devices to the high school in particular. And so we knew that we needed to study and really have some thinking about what our device fleet would look like from the district moving forward, because we knew that Chromebooks were no longer adequate for the things that our students needed to do within the teaching and learning environment. And also that we were relying on personal electronic devices to help with some of that teaching and learning. So that's what accelerated our pace. We're also acutely aware of House Bill 2230, which is the one that's going through right now being discussed within the legislation about the amount of time that children, particularly our youngest learners, are on devices. And so that has influenced some of our thinking and will continue to influence our thinking. And Luke and I have had a lot of conversation about that. So you'll see some breadcrumbs of that. You're not going to see that tied up in a nice, neat bow though. But we are working on that. The other piece that we knew as we were talking about what needed to happen with district devices was the sense of the infrastructure and the ways to sort of align some things within our system. So Luke will talk a little bit more about the fact that we have multiple platforms that are operating right now, and so his team has a pretty heavy lift with those multiple platforms. And those decisions were made purposefully the last time that we did a technology study, but we think we've outgrown our thinking at that time, and so our thinking has shifted, and some of that is influenced by the need to have some consistency across the system, so across the entire district. And then, like I said before, this idea of connecting everything to teaching and learning. It's not about devices. Tonight's going to feel about devices. And I think we're – we feel like we have to sort of overtly talk about that, but knowing that that isn't really the purpose of our work. The purpose of our work is how children use these tools to help advance learning. Okay. I feel like I've said enough about that. So the input that we sought through this first year, and we have really accelerated the pace of all of this. So we've gone very quickly with this work. And in order to do that, we also cast the net pretty wide. So our technology committee is one of our largest committees in the district. We invited probably about 55 people to it. There's about 40 that come with consistency. It's representative of teachers K through 12. It is, there's administrative representation on the team. Ben is a part of the team. Luke and I lead the team together, and all of our educational technologists are also a part of it, so it's a very large group. Some of those teachers also are coordinators, so they represent a larger, bigger, broader perspective within that work. We've also, Nina talked about this, we've sought some input from students, particularly the Principal's Advisory Committee, And they were really integral in helping us really think through what tools Not only what the tools are but like the ways that we could be using the tools more purposefully Within the classroom and one of the things that I think was really fun and Nina and I've talked about this But what was really fun for me was to watch the the students interacting with these devices and thinking about the possibilities of Things that could happen with them that just haven't been able to happen with the the fleet that we've currently had We went to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council, Stacy reported back on this. We talked through, or was Chris at that meeting? No, Stacy was there. Okay. And we talked with them really about soliciting some input from the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council about from a parent lens what is important for us to be considering and thinking about. Some of that, the breadcrumbs of those conversations are going to be evident in work that we're continuing to do that we know we need to do. One of the most sort of overt pieces was us making some pretty concrete decisions about when we would send devices home and also helping parents to understand why we would, when we make that decision, why would we be sending them home and for what purpose? So having some really clear guidelines about what that would look like. So we felt like that was really valuable input that is leading some of our work actually through the end of this year. And then Luke has worked with his counterparts in other districts to really get a sense of like where other districts thinking of going with their fleet and how does it integrate with teaching and learning.

all right well good evening um i just thought to myself as i was sitting in the back i was like you know i don't know how i drew this card but i get to start on the tada moment which is kind of fun um it's super exciting right so like i don't know i drew that card but um but it is it's really exciting i think you know all of this work culminating back to last summer it was a charge of the board and students and staff and everybody in the school community to look at these one-to-one devices and student devices just in general across the board. And so we took that charge, and it's been a great process working and getting feedback from all over the district and beyond. And so it's great to kind of land here. I'm going to talk a little bit through here at the very beginning just to give you a little bit of background on the proposal, and then we'll go in a little bit deeper as we go throughout the proposal itself. So K-5, we are recommending that Apple iPad would be the device for that. Just as a little bit of every class they sit in carts that exists in classrooms and are utilized as needed so really the K through two component of this doesn't vastly change a lot of these devices really are on cycle already anyway and so some of these devices would be being cycled regardless of the fact so that is the K through two components not much would be changing there you know when we got feedback It really, the feedback came back that it was the right device for what they were using it for. And being able to kind of work with kids to do some of that discovery and things like that. But also there are some other components that we'll talk about here in a minute. Three through five, feedback came back pretty across the board. Creation of things and doing some of that work really became evident in this group. We also saw that our third grade teachers talked a lot about The fact that there was that transition time going from second grade and then having to reteach students in third grade to a brand new device. There was some loss of time and a little bit of frustration trying to get through. So we really just heard that consistency would really be helpful in this case. Six through eight. One thing that I will say about the feedback from six through eight is it was pretty universal that Chromebooks were just not it. And so it became very evident very quickly, hearing from students even at the middle school that they were looking to be able to do more and have more opportunities, you know, things like the front-facing camera and beyond, which we'll talk about later. here in a minute as well. And then nine through 12, now this is the fun one for me because this was one that really our students really kind of pushed some thinking when we got together with them. You know, our students are awesome about that. They were able to kind of give us some insight that we really even in the committee hadn't really thought about and so it really challenged our thinking to be okay, let's find the right device for these students that meet all of the needs So we really felt like the iPad by itself wasn't going to meet the need. And so the iPad Air was chosen as a more professional device. In fact, the chipset that has now been released that the students would be getting should that be chosen to this evening was released last Wednesday. And it's more powerful than most of the MacBooks in the district. And so it gives a little more space, more professional case. And we still achieve a lot of the things that we were hearing. Mobility, the weight of the devices. We wanted to achieve that. You know, keyboards that were more professional in nature and being able to do a lot of that. And then the last thing that we kind of land on is the stylists. that we would be making available to every student.

So when we think about that connection of teaching and learning with this, one of the things for us both in the last cycle that we did in thinking about our fleet and then also with this is like why is this the right device for us? So how does it meet the needs? So a lot of times, people come into committees with a preconceived notion of what they want us to do. And students come into a meeting and they have an idea of what they want to do. And so we've pushed back to say, let's talk about what we need something to do as opposed to I want a MacBook or I want a dot, dot, dot. And so what we think about when we think about why are these the right devices? When we think from the K2 lens, a lot of, so all of our assessments that are standardized are on a device. Most things at that level require a touchscreen because it requires children to manipulate things. So pre-reading skills, children are not yet reading necessarily, they need to be able to manipulate things to show us their knowledge and their understanding. Additionally, this idea of like documentation with a camera. So when we think about your teaching and learning experience, like what are ways that we can document things with cameras and then mark them up? So we have evidence like within math classrooms of things that have been really awesome of kids having some agency and some voice and choice in that, but then also being able, so taking a picture of some geometric shapes that you might see around the classroom and then marking that piece up to be able to show their learning. So no need for a keyboard at that point, and really no need for anything different than what has already existed. Teachers work really purposefully around how to use the technology, and there continues to be conversation and a value placed on the importance of a balance between a device and physical materials. So thinking about manipulatives, thinking about actual texts and those kinds of things. So not having children learning how to read on devices and those types of things. As students age up in the system, the tasks that are required of them become more complex. So in three through five, the reason why we're looking at the integrated keyboard as a part of the case really is because keyboarding becomes a part of the curriculum. So if you think about our curriculum, we're learning how to print K1. We're learning cursive in second grade. We're learning keyboarding in third grade. And so it becomes a piece that's important for that. We also continue to ramp up our expectations around writing on assessments. So you think about like a performance task where now they're writing versus some of that manipulation of materials in K2. And then the idea of creating. Stacey referenced this when we came to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council, and I even have a little sticker on my computer that talks about that creating is bigger and better than consumption. And so that we're really trying to focus on within this idea of empowered learning not just consuming on the device but using it for a purpose and using it in that sort of sense of like presentations or the kinds of documents. That continues to amp up six through eight with the with the increase in writing the creating with the tools and then we talked about like in world language classrooms this idea of being able to use the device to record so and get sort of instantaneous feedback is a really important tool as we're building proficiency. within languages. And then nine through 12, some of the examples that we thought about were things like within science, we had actually at one of the meetings that Nina was at, we had a science teacher who talked about the fact that when we have a device, this is how they used to use phones, of a science lab where they can capture something on video and then really spend time digging into that lab and Unpacking what that means and what do you see? So if you think about a physics lab or something like that when you're thinking about pendulums because when I think physics I think pendulums That then you can capture that on video and really sort of think about Periods and those those kinds of things with that again recording our globe students have talked a lot about the the sort of lack of a like their Chromebooks are not great for being able to record their interviews. And then thinking about this larger screen, so a standard iPad having a smaller screen that the high school students really do need something that's larger and the keyboards for longer writing tests. When we visited with the high school students, they were in the process of writing a pretty big paper. And so a lot of the feedback, I think that was what was on their mind of like make sure that the tool is something that allows us to be able to do that piece.

Yeah, so I think it'd be important, and I think Milena hit on it a little bit here, but I'm going to just speak to it again. You know what the process really looked like when we got together with the committee is that we really did, we started with this idea of, okay, what do we just want kids to be able to do? And let's focus on that because I think everybody around this room, like Dr. Garganito just mentioned, is that if we were to sit here and I was to say, hey, choose a device that would be right for kids, we'd all have some preconceived ideas that maybe this would be it, this would be it. But we really didn't want to start there. So we spent all that time getting to this point thinking about, okay, what are the things and the support that we need or the support to develop some of those skills? And we started there. And then when we kind of developed that skill list, we then moved into the area of, okay, let's talk about the attributes of a device that could support that before we were even talking about a device itself. And then we moved into that last really rung of being able to choose a device based upon what those attributes really are. So when we look at how we benefit, you know, really what we were really learning is that the creation tools that were going to be available to the iPad and the iPad Air were going to be significantly greater than we saw in any other device. And I think we experienced that when Apple was here. We experienced it across the board with the committee. And so it was really positive with that front-facing camera and the mobility and all of the things, augmented reality. There was just so much more available to our students for those aspects. Consistency, as I spoke to earlier, was we really do benefit here. It allows us really to make uniform not only the experience across students as they go from grade to grade to grade, but even from a standpoint of it allows us to be consistent in teaching. professional learning. It allows us to be consistent in the management of the devices that if I'm switching grades or something like that, that experience doesn't change. And we've had a lot of that. That really was producing when we got feedback some frustration across the board. Built-in accessibility for all learners, this is huge. One of the things that Apple does really well, and if you use Apple products, you may or may not be aware, but some of the accessibility options are unmatched by any other device that's out there right now. They are really putting a lot of development into whether it be something as simple as text-to-speech or other auditory ways to control the device. There is so much available that we'll be able to utilize for our students across the board. And then the fun one, management and safety, right? I love it as the technology person. Being able to do some of this work better on behalf of our students and parents across the district is important to me. and important to our team. And so being able to provide windows in to how devices are being used, being able to provide a safe experience across the board and manage devices well, this is going to provide us that opportunity. This transition gives us some opportunity to move some other things across the board as far as technology is concerned to really meet this need in a way that we would feel appreciated. is appropriate across the board. So talking about the budget component of this, and I'm going to go through and give you a little bit of background about what we're doing now, and then also how this looks across the districts in talking about the budget implications as a whole. So currently, as of last year, we moved into touchscreen Chromebooks. and started in an early cycle of that to bring those devices into the district. That's the cost of last year's devices. We anticipate that this device cost was going to raise probably quite a bit because everything has been going up, and so we would expect that that would be much, I wouldn't say much higher, but a higher price going into this upcoming year. Typically, what we've learned about Chromebooks across the board is that after a full cycle of a device, they really aren't worth very much at the end. Chromebooks, after four years of use, don't serve as much of a resale item. Really, most of them are surplused at very minimal amounts just because they don't. serve that. They don't have that return on investment like other devices have. So that kind of gives you a little bit idea what we're doing now. So the iPad changes the game a little bit because a standard iPad actually comes in underneath what we are actually paying for a touchscreen Chromebook right now. And so then, as I mentioned earlier, as we move into a more professional device like the iPad Air for our high school students, it does take that price up per unit a little bit more. Again, we felt like this was a really solid move, giving our students a lot more opportunities and opportunities things available to the iPad Air that aren't available on the iPad by itself. One of those would be down the road, we could look into Apple Intelligence that is available on an Air but not available on a standard iPad. Now, obviously, we still have another year of a tech study. Talking about the AI components, we still got a lot of work to do. But we didn't want to find ourselves in a spot that we had not taken advantage of an opportunity to make sure that all possibilities were available to us throughout this upcoming cycle. iPads historically have retained about 30%. I'm going to show you an example of that, of their value when being surplused after four years. And so we'll look at that. Overall, that typically reduces the net lifecycle cost. So that just means by bringing that back into the funding of what we use from a year-to-year basis. to fund our device purchases. So an example of this, we took the step and went ahead and took our current fleet that is existing at K through two that would be being surplus some already and then some within the year and were able to take that and actually quote that as surplus now. So giving you an idea showing you that these devices do carry that value beyond The cycle and give us an opportunity to really recoup some of that cost at the end kind of demonstrate Demonstrates that secondary market value now again I think it's important to note that this all always will assume that Apple retains their value But historically we have seen that across the board for years and that hasn't changed Often so or really at all. So when we look at the total cost breakdown This is kind of a slide that gives you a little bit idea what kind of we're seeing the case cost again, you know really diving into the air and Being the most expensive device there in total but offering all of the all of the attributes that we really wanted to see for our students and and giving them a more professional experience, and then some of the ROI as we go through that on what the devices are worth afterward. In totality, we have not probably seen even close to a 10% from our Chromebook, but there are situations in which that could be the case. So what does that look like when we talk about a four-year cycle? This is what we see across four years. And so this would be every device in the district This is a full cycle of every device all the way from K all the way to 12th grade and so this would exist over the next four years So that is essentially broken down by four Now what that looks like as far as Apple and the opportunity that we have in front of us, that is a total cost there over four years because the full cycle would be four years. Apple has offered us a three-year 0% financing which breaks down to that. And then on year four basically we would finalize that buyback and bring that overall cost down to very similar to what we would see now. So if we were gonna look at how that exists over the next four years, We would anticipate that as long as the value of Apple holds, that we would really be very close to, if not in the positive, cost neutral by the end. Again, always assuming that there is that value at the end of the cycle.

So the things that we know that we still need to do, work on, and some of these are this year. So pending the decision of the board, if we were to move forward with this, we know that we have to start really planning out what our professional learning would look like. And that would look like student learning as well as adult learning. And so we've said oftentimes like the worst thing we can do is give you a device that doesn't work. The second worst thing we can is give you a devices that you don't know how to use. So we know that we do have to do some learning in that way, and so as we develop our year-long professional learning plan for next year, that will be a component of this work. And then what does that look like for children also? So the ed techs are already starting to have some conversation about what that looks like in the classrooms. As well as what that professional learning for staff looks like embedded within the classroom. So it's not really effective if we want to really focus on this idea of integration of technology and teaching and learning. It's not really effective for us to sit just in a space and teach you how to use a device. It's more effective for us to be in your teaching and learning space and think about how we use those devices purposefully. We also know that, and we referenced this earlier with the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council, this idea of like age appropriate technology use guidelines. So both what does that look like within our classrooms as well as what does that look when we make a decision about when devices go home? So whatever grade level that is that we make the decision that the devices would be sent home, that we would also be helping parents to understand the purpose of why we're sending them home and what we would be expecting children to be doing with them while they're at home. So that seems to be a pretty big gap right now. And so I think we can address some of that, but also having some conversation about what that looks like in the classroom. So just because we have access to devices doesn't mean that we have to be using devices all the time. So that sense of how do we make sure that that allocation of time within the classroom has a healthy balance of physical materials, physical manipulatives, real books, those types of things and access to devices. AI is something that's really big for us. We have about two years ago we developed some temporary sort of guidance around AI and haven't done a lot with it since and our teachers are asking for more help with that both from a teaching standpoint of like how teachers use AI but then also from a standpoint of like what's happening with students within classrooms And then if we make this move, one of the things that we think is important is to really explore the idea of a learning management system that's more robust than Google Classroom. So a way of being able to manage things with students that also can lead into where they're going because the majority of them are going to college where learning management systems are a good part of that.

So the device is, and the management component of this, just a couple of things that we're thinking through right now. Number one is the need for MacBooks still to be available. We have always maintained this, we've always maintained kind of like an additional fleet that has been available when certain needs arise, we have it. We do feel like there will be need for MacBooks across our high school. And so we have already kind of begun the process of really allocating resources to be able to fulfill that need and to be able to provide students when needed, whether that's if they're doing work in Adobe or there are certain science courses or physics courses that may need those components. that are only available on a MacBook, that they would be available. And so we have already kind of started that process and what that looks like. The cycle itself, we've been working through as far as the management specifics are concerned. Google really does remain as a mainstay within the district. It doesn't change. One of the main comments that we got when going around to the schools and talking to staff was, is it going away? Well, actually, it really doesn't change the fact that that is still going to be a component of what we do and what we have within the district. So Google actually remains the same as far as that's concerned. You know, the repair and components like that will be working through as well. AppleCare is part of this purchase just in general. There is some really great support reasoning for that. It really does provide a turnaround of a device much faster than what we are currently experiencing with repair right now. And so it also then allows us to actually keep a fewer amount of devices. And so we can move down to basically almost just about 5% of extra devices to be able to have to keep on hand to use as least devices when students have a device mishap, we'll say. And so we'll be working through kind of that process, be talking about what that could look like in the future and developing some of that. You know, It also kind of changes the look when we talk about the bring your own device. We knew that that was on its way out. And so we knew that we also had to make sure that any device, when I go back to CHS MacBooks, but that would be across the board. With devices not being able to be on campus any longer, we had to make sure the devices that were on campus and available to students met every need. And so that was a major component in the study. Infrastructure, we've been doing a lot of this work. This is not work that we could have waited on. We have to do this pretty early on in the process to be able to make sure we're ready for any type of device deployment to this magnitude because we are talking about an entire cycle here, changeover. And so we've been doing this work, working on filtering, making sure that that is a reality, that is going to be a working reality. The best thing to be working on right now we have felt like is let's just make sure that if these devices were to launch day one, that they work exactly as we intended. And so a lot of thought gets put into that, a lot of work on behalf of our teams in moving forward should this be the direction that we go.

So what questions do you have for us?

Why don't I start with Ben because he's on the phone. I was like,

everybody's looking at me.

And he could shed some light on some of this work.

Absolutely. And ask questions. Well, and thank you because I feel like I got quite a few of my questions already somewhat addressed at least. Thank you for that. It has been a really great, great privilege to be on this committee. So thank you for having me, I guess I would say. You know, just to experience, because again, I have some background similar to Luke in terms of being IT in school. So it's just great to be back and hearing, like learning from specialists, technology specialists of which we have some great ones, and then also some of Luke's staff, and then all the teachers. It shows you just how complex, actually, everything really is at the end of the day. So I guess a couple things I want to make, a couple statements. The Chromebook is really what's called a cloud device. It really is dependent upon connectivity. It can't do much without it. Um, and so, you know, in terms of, it's really kind of night and day between an iPad and a Chromebook. Uh, Chromebooks have their place. They have, especially, uh, cause they've been traditionally inexpensive and easy to manage. Um, and I think also, I mean, my, my sense is that coming out of COVID, you know, there was a lot of rush into it because we needed devices and we needed them quickly. Um, and, and be able to manage them, whether they're wherever they go. Um, So I think just to understand that an iPad can function independently of a network, especially in a very intentional way, with apps that can run independent of having any connection to the internet, for example. I think the other thing some folks are like, well, how good can the keyboards be compared to a traditional laptop? Yeah, I don't know. And I got to say, and again, I'm actually not an Apple guy at all. I'm a PC, Android. I know, I'm a weirdo. Yeah, so,

weirdo. You're the green text.

Wait, what's happening here? So what I would say is the keyboards have come a long way. The traditional keyboard that comes with a tablet, I think in the past were kind of cheap or whatever. They are not cheap anymore. And they also are totally seamless. There's no moisture getting inside those keyboards. So they're basically waterproof, which I can tell you the Chromebooks are not water-based. So I'm sure Luke can tell you many stories, many stories. And then what else did I want to say? I mean, I think the form factor that's been mentioned a couple times, the weight factor. I mean, again, I pick up my kids' backpacks and it's like, oh, my gosh. Like, you know, chiropractor, here we come, you know. So I just think that that experience, and this is true for, you know, I think all levels, of course, is really important. Like how people feel about being able to be productive and get right after their task versus like, you know, It just matters. I mean, small things that we experience that we don't like how they work add up to a lot of frustration and distraction. So I think there is something to that. I guess, let me review my, so I guess I did want to, Luca, you mentioned that it makes sense to me that we're kind of looking at this now. First of all, we asked to look at this as soon as you could possibly do it. And I think in the time spent when you receive the task, you've done so much. And so I appreciate that. I guess, you know, I understand now that you need time to get ready for something this big, right? It's big. So I'm just curious, what are maybe some elements of that preparation that you foresee?

Yeah, and there could be some assistance that we may need in deploying devices when the time would come. We are actually doing some pretty, I'd love to be able to tout some of my team that is really thinking outside of the box on how to be really smart and efficient with making a sign-in and making deployment and being able to hand a kid a device and go, oh, I can sign in and I can do these things. and they are really putting a ton of effort in making that super seamless. And so we are really pushing forward, and we believe that we have some really great work being done. Emmett Berry, who is part of our team, has really dove in to making the student experience good. And he's probably listening to this right now going, what have you said, Luke? But he really he's he's really put a lot of thought into it. So to that point, we're we're really thinking through the experience of how it gets to a student. And we'll be working with our team and working with the buildings to to facilitate what that's going to look like going into next year and into the fall. We have some ideas, and so we'll be fleshing those out. There could be an opportunity at some point to just for the sheer movement of as many devices as we're talking about looking into that. But for the most part, we're pretty confident that with some of the new processes going into place with identity management and with being able to provision the devices that we're going to have some good options.

I think also like from my lens, what I've seen happen since Lucas come into this role and with his team, because we have sort of a fleet of iPads already, he's already been doing some work in streamlining some processes that the teachers will talk about how quickly now a child can get into a program. So like putting Clever on the devices allows a kid to very quickly scan a QR code and get into what they need to get to. Whereas before we had you know children typing in long passwords and things like that forgetting those passwords like that eats up instructional time. So some of the things that that luke's team has been able to respond to from questions from staff and and and things that they're wanting they've been able to make happen, we also have a pilot group right now. that we call iEmpower, and it's this sense of thinking about the iPads in this integration of empowered learning. And they've been piloting some different kinds of things with the devices as far as management is concerned, as far as teachers being able to deploy something to students very quickly. So now we're assured that everyone is on the same thing. They're not over here somewhere on the Internet when I need them here. The iPads have allowed us to do some of those things, and Luke's team has helped us to be able to do that. From my lens, that's super important as far as maximizing time in the classroom and focusing on instruction. versus spending time getting them into the device. So I just want to say from my lens, I think that's been really important work that his team has already been doing. And so I see it continuing to happen if the fleet were to expand.

And I think at one point, too, like Ben, you and I talked about, you know, one of the things that we do see is that when somebody needs an application or something like that, we very early on, we realized that it was we were really inefficient. A teacher would need something. They would need an application, a software of some kind, and it could be a month before that full process took place. We were able to take that process, reinvent it, redesign it, bring it digital, and now we're seeing it in sometimes a matter of just a day. 48 hours and being able to turn that around in in just a magnificent fashion So we've been putting a lot of thought into this early on that, you know to try and make this as efficient Efficiency is super important to me. So trying to Make it a good experience.

Can I jump sorry? I jump in here because you're you're bringing up the concept of change management with the tech system I don't want to have to have us go back to that topic. So, you know, let me just type in with one question.

Yeah,

so I get that there is a lot of process changes that happens with the teachers and within a school. It strikes me, listening to all this, that communication with a variety of stakeholders is going to be really important in the change management aspect of this, including not only teachers and administrators, but parents, guardians, families, people at home, whatever it is. And a lot of that communication is going to have to happen over the summer. So have we thought through the communication aspect to change management and what's sort of our viewpoint on that, knowing that it's still a work in progress? Sorry, Gina.

Oddly enough, we've already been working on some of that communication. So some of that has already been taking place in some capacity that we're getting ready to roll it out, should need be. We've been also developing a lot of documentation as far as, okay, if I need to find this information on how to do something as well, is it going to be available to us? And so we've been developing a lot of that documentation on top of all of this in an effort to really communicate this well.

Okay. And the one thing I would say, just listening to the last couple of comments before I interrupted, the one piece of advice I would give you guys that you didn't ask for but here I am so I'll give it to you is You know, let's get the core product out and working first. You know, it could be my interpretation of what you guys said. There are a lot of add-ons and bells and whistles that you can put in over time. And what we wouldn't want to do, even if you rolled out, here are the great new Chromebooks. You know, shout out to my Pixel brother, Ben, over there. But, you know... just get it working correctly so that everyone has a really great experience. And then over the course of time, you can add all the bells and whistles that it can do with these devices.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. We had even talked about a status monitor of being able to monitor the core things of what we would expect them to be able to do so that everybody could know where everything is at in that expectation to be able to that. So that's really good, really good.

And I just have a couple more things. You know, I could go on and on. Can

I? I'm sorry. Can I let Nina ask her question? Oh, yeah.

Nina, please. Go ahead.

I'm

sorry, Ben.

Go ahead, Nina.

It's very, very quick. I was just wondering about the extent of your, like, of the loaner devices that we would have because I'm wondering for things, like, I'm sure there's a lot, but maybe, like, NWEA testing or I know there's, like, a school-administered SAT test. So would these be things that could be – like, I'm just really curious. Would these be things that Okay, that's really cool. Okay, so that wouldn't be something where every student needs to get a separate... Okay, that's great. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you.

No, that's a really good question. We definitely had to spend some time on that. She does. You always get questions.

Go ahead, Ben. Sure. Good night,

Nina. I guess one of the things... that's so as in the spirit of course of some of the legislation of late you know the fact that we still and it's understandable why we still have kids who bring their own devices to high school my son included Do you think, would the expectation be for next year or some other time when we would go ahead and be able to make that no longer possible? And a related question to that is, I would imagine that any issues that we may have on the high school network could also be related to the fact that we have a whole army of rogue devices, essentially. And also back to the intentionality and what is not happening on these, because you really don't know what is happening on a device that a kid brings to school, potentially. So I just want to see if we can touch on that. I know that is at least the spirit or intent of some of this, but curious what the roadmap for that is.

Yeah, so the provision for bringing devices was really just for this year. And so that does come to an end. And probably to the point of that, it is a healthy end. We do believe that if we can provide the right devices, we limit the distractions. And there is a lot of availability on these devices to be able to really be safe and secure with and and eliminate those distractions so to that point yeah there is there is not a whole lot of insight that we get other than some base filtering to a student's device that they bring on campus this changes that game quite a bit because now we have devices that we have oversight in completely and those exist on our campus with you know complete control really and so yeah that that would be That would be the end of the bring your own device. There we go. I

also envision that the role out of that would be us partnering with Dan and his team really to think about how is that communicated to families? How is that communicated to students? So similar to the personal electronic devices, I think it's going to be a parallel kind of approach to things that will have to be monitored, that we will have to remind children. So Dan and I had a conversation the other day that after spring break is a good time to remind children of like what the rules are. So I think it's the same kind of stuff and we've already begun talking to Dan about what that might look like.

So can I ask the obvious question of will we be allowing kids to link their personal phones up to these devices?

No,

no. Okay, that's the right answer. Yeah. Because you do know that with all of the bring your own devices, that is exactly what is getting through the filters. And

part of this process, and I know the kids probably don't like hearing this, but part of this process is actually doing some of that work. Things that need to actually be really managed and secured. And this gives us the opportunity to do that.

And then do we, do you have more questions? No,

I'm done, thank

you. Okay, should I just ask my next one? So the durability of these, just, you know, the iPads versus the Chromes or the Chromebooks, do we think from a tech perspective that they're just as good or you're not worried about it because of the AppleCare Warranty sounds like the keyboards are probably better because they're waterproof, but just in general, like they're going to get dropped.

Absolutely. They're going to

get kicked around. We know this. So,

yeah, no matter what devices in the hands of students, we have to think about all of those things. We do anticipate and did spend some time doing some studying of devices. and rates of damage are much, much, much lower on iPads than Chromebooks. And they are much lower than MacBooks. And so this really from those studies have shown even some of our – Third-party friends that do some of the work and repair and devices have all said that there is a lesser percentage representative really of The 5% buffer that we'll be having on hand to be able to meet that need and so You know, we do believe that also AppleCare will play a huge role because AppleCare does give us the opportunity to really get those devices in and back pretty quickly. And so that is a role. And there will definitely be breakage. We understand that. We do feel that the cases that were chosen were chosen with that in mind as one of the reasons. You know, cases are a big deal in this process because they really have to meet both the security of the device need, but also be able to meet and not limit the use of the device. And so there is a fine line when considering cases for that. But we do feel like we'll be able to meet that need.

So kind of in a follow-up to that and more from a treasurer question perspective, like a lot of schools charge like a security deposit fee or an annual tech fee to kind of offset some of the cost of damages that wouldn't be covered by something like an AppleCare warranty. Have you guys considered that as you enact your second year of your study or as you roll these out? Is that something that... Or if you, maybe since we're rolling this out so quickly for the next school year, and the good faith is that we're covering the AppleCare warranty, but should you return a device that has clearly been mistreated? Correct. That there'll be a deposit fee before you get your second device that covers the cost of the next AppleCare warranty? I mean, I think there's probably some things to consider around that that actually makes this even more financially attractive and durable even beyond the return on investment numbers that you put in I totally understand that the Chromebook becomes like a paperweight, but you know there I do think that When based on the important communications that have to go out to families when families understand that there is some skin in the game for you to have this enhanced Technology the device that is going to support your child's learning when it is used in an age-appropriate Manner for the right classes and all the other things you're engaged in second year That we do expect that you treat it like of the valuable device that it is and

Yeah, and that actually has been an active conversation on what that could look like. Most often seen in schools as like a self-insurance. The idea being is that it's a deductible per breakage. Currently, we have some very what I would call loose parameters around intentional damage. and being charged for intentional damage but our goal would be to really um unify that messaging and come up with something that is is is more well known because i don't think across the district that is a that is a really well communicated item and uh this is an opportunity i think for us to really um really detail what that should look like moving forward and a conversation that we will be having moving into next year should

I was going to say, Ben and I talked about that same topic a little bit. And something else that I thought about in addition to maybe a monetary financial skin in the game is, you know, the kids and parents signed that contract. Maybe looking at that again and putting some more responsibility in there about, you know, and, you know, you're signing like, you know, a contract that if you were to damage it or more than once or whatever anyway. Just maybe that might require another look as well or consideration.

That's it. Good work. Thank you.

Okay. Leo, sure.

First of all, thank you. I can tell this was a lot of work, and it's true. The board asked you to do this, and they asked you to do it in a hurry, and a big part of the intent of that was getting rid of the individual devices, and I'm glad to see that happening. It's a big deal. I wanted to... I always feel in this conversation. I always want to reassert the context that technology use changed in our district and every school really really rapidly in a unique situation a few years ago. and we're now, I view this process as partly going back and looking at that and thinking about whether that was good and whether that should be unwound perhaps or altered. And so it's just really important, and I think you're doing this to kind of avoid the path dependency of this is where we got and you know we got there because of some very specific circumstances. You know I had three kids in elementary school when COVID hit and they all suddenly had devices 100 percent of the time at home but they wouldn't have that even now under our current practices a kindergartner wouldn't have a device at home so that's important to think about. Milena, you articulated kind of a philosophical approach. I think you used the word purposeful. Could you say that again?

The purposeful integration of technology in teaching and learning.

So is that kind of the philosophical approach that you've taken to this work and the district's approach to technology? I don't want to put words in your mouth. That

really started when Jeff came into the district. We made a really concerted effort to tie the two departments together. And so then when Luke took over, we continued to feel like that's a very important part of our work is to tie the two department together. Because I don't think either of us ever wants people to think that we have devices just to have devices. That it really is about how can we be focused on this idea of empowered learning through the use of something that allows us access in different ways and everything, but we still have to have really purposeful conversations about what that means. And I think we have a lot of conversations both with one another, with people in the community, with teachers about what does that mean on a day-to-day basis of like what children are doing on these devices. I think, you know, Paul talked a lot about when you were talking about like memorization and that kind of stuff of like being a little old school. I'm a little old school too, right? Like a book is important, right? Writing with a pen and those kinds of, like those are important things that we still have to value within our classrooms, but then there's also this thing that allows us opportunities that we wouldn't necessarily have if we didn't have those devices. And so it's really, like I use the word balance, but I think sometimes balance indicates like equal That's actually not what I'm trying to indicate. It's more about when we think about the pie, what is the allocation? And that shifts from day to day as well as it shifts from unit to unit or what we're focused on. There are times where a child, like a kindergartner in our classrooms could go a week without ever touching a device, but it's sitting in the classroom. But also having the availability to use it when we need it, especially for, you know, I'm big on maximizing instructional time When we are trying to do a standardized assessment, and we don't we like we have the luxury of having these devices available We can very quickly Test kids very quickly and then move into what we need to do with instruction if we're moving those from from classroom to classroom and thinking about that kind of stuff we can't have the same sort of like in the moment response to things and I think that idea of like maximizing instructional time is so important to our to my philosophy of teaching and learning, and I think our teachers share that philosophy. And I know Luke shares that philosophy with me. There's a professional development that we do that has an image of a pool. And we talk about the use of technology within the pool. And in that image, we also have a person standing outside of the pool. And the purpose of that is to say, we are never going to tell you that you always have to use technology to do dot, dot, dot. We're going to tell you there's times that you're not in the pool. And that's important. It's important. So like when we run professional learning, we oftentimes will reference that image of like it's moving back and forth from the shallow end to the deep end, and what are children doing with devices? And sometimes you're not even in

them. Thank you. Yeah, so I'll

climb down off my soapbox.

No,

no.

We all got to get on a soapbox from time to time. Could you go back one slide to the kind of next steps piece of it?

The still to be determined that one.

Yeah, yeah. I want to go through in particular those three bullets under guidelines and systems. Let's start with AI. And I'm just kind of curious what the what the current You spoke a little about this, but what the current practice is or if there is a coherent current practice I mean is there an expectation that kids will encounter AI at a particular point in their education in our current system or is it Left up to individual teachers and I understand this may be codified over the next year But do we know what this situation is now?

Right, so we have a document that we developed a couple years ago that starts with a series of belief statements and those belief statements are tied to the profile of the graduate. And one of the first statements that it talks about is that AI is here and it's here to stay. But that we have to, like some of the next statements talk about, so then what is our responsibility as educators to help children to understand those tools? I think historically within our system, there's a certain level of autonomy that teachers have. And that we trust them with that level of autonomy. So that looks different in different classes. So there are some classes where, and we've given sort of sample syllabus language that could be used. And some of that, none of that language does it say shut it down. But the language does speak specifically to sort of this idea of academic integrity. And so like if one is going to use something, and this includes the adults in the system, if one is going use something like that, that you have cited it, that you have made it obvious, those types of things. We've also had a lot of conversation with teachers about what are the tasks that you have children do? um so that if you create a really robust task a child can't go to ai to to to complete that task right so if and and when we think about the competencies of the profile and the way that we develop tasks if there are things that that allow the the child to put themselves into that work you you can't have a computer generate that right you um those types of things so We've been putting some shape to it in that way. We have teachers who would say to us, give us much more guidance and lock things down. We have teachers say, open it all up and let us go, and everywhere in between. And Ben's been a part of some of these conversations on the committee. They're really difficult conversations. And also, I think some of what was interesting to us with the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council was I had a mental model of AI. And when we were talking to that group, I realized that the parents didn't have necessarily the same mental model of AI that I had. So we sometimes look at AI as something that can allow us To explore something a little bit differently or whatever, we have teachers who think specifically around this academic integrity piece and cheating and that type of stuff. The parents never really mentioned anything about cheating. It was much more about this sort of like not really knowing what the possibilities are with this. And it's sort of this unknown entity. And so that kind of changed some of my thinking too of like what is the work that we need to do within our community as a whole to understand this piece. Also with the adults, We've spent some time really thinking about, this is going to show my old schoolness again too. Like AI can be a tool that can help you to be more efficient as a teacher. I didn't have that available to me when I was a teacher. So I sit there and think we should be writing lesson plans like this. And so that has been sort of a growth point for me also of like what are the possibilities and the capabilities with some of these things. that could help us to be more efficient and also help us to create tools within a teaching and learning setting that could allow us to differentiate in a very different way. So there's all these things for us to explore, and we don't have it figured out. But we're trying. And I would sort of, I guess sheepishly say to you that our first blush at creating a tool and guidance is not a good tool and guidance. So the teachers have said to us, this really isn't helpful. And we did present it, like we had the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council actually look at it and give us some feedback. We've had the committee look at it and gave us some feedback. And we don't know what to do with that feedback because it's all over the place. Because this is one of those things that not everybody agrees on. And so that is a really hard piece for us to know sort of how to move forward. We're talking to other districts about what that looks like in other districts, too. But I don't know where we're going to land on that.

Yeah. I mean, as someone in a profession that has a lot of people trying to get us to use AI all the time, It's a really good way to make big mistakes is what I could tell and you know at some point you got to teach people. What it really is and not you know what it glossily appears to be so they can avoid those mistakes you know but I don't know what where that falls.

I think one example of something that has that has broadened our horizons so there's a tool called snorkel which is an AI tool. that when we think about our world language teachers and the idea of building proficiency and everything like that, children need to write, they need to speak, they need to do all this stuff. Teachers need to provide feedback on all of those things. If you think about an elementary Spanish teacher, an elementary Spanish teacher teaches 350 students. There's no way they can give that kind of feedback, like immediate feedback. Snorkel has been a tool that has allowed some sort of instantaneous feedback to children so that now the teacher can focus on conferring with these kids, these kids are also getting feedback. It's not the only way that they're getting feedback, but it has maximized that thinking around the teaching and learning environment that I'm like, all right, now we're maximizing instructional

time. I'll move up next bullet, age-appropriate technology use guidelines. And really, I think the conversation we should have here right now is about at the elementary school. Yep. And you know what do we have any clear expectation about when devices will be set sent home by grade level that's one question

right so we're doing some work with that right now so currently devices really don't go home key stage one K one two. It's a little autonomous with teachers and different kinds of assignments, three, four, five, and that looks different across the buildings and looks different in those spaces. So what our goal is is really to land the plane on what that looks like K through five before the end of this school year. So we're engaging in conversations with teachers right now about like if you are sending devices home What are you sending them home for so like us really getting sort of a sense of like what's the status quo? Right now and and do we really believe that's necessary or is there a different way for us to to to be doing that? I think all of us can agree that the longer we wait to send a device home The more helpful it is to the families and If we can accomplish those things without sending the device home, then I think we're good with let's not do that. We have not decided what that grade level is right now, but we're engaged in pretty significant conversations with teachers about that right now.

Yeah, there's a component to this too that is technological in nature. When we do decide... whatever age group that would be taking devices home what does that look like at home as opposed to here you know what kind of uh guidance do parents get or have that is one thing that we heard from parents quite a bit um is that these devices are coming home and we don't know exactly how to deal with them um and so we've been working on some of that throughout this transition as well from the technological side that what um what resources what windows into the things that are being done on device, what ability maybe even at some point to restrict off hours at home. So we are working on that as a part of this as well.

Did you just say that you could shut it, like if they take it home, you could shut it down at a certain time?

Is that what you just said? We are working on that capabilities to see if that would be a possibility moving into next year.

So and I really, everything you just said, I really appreciate. And when you said it earlier, you said we're talking about when we take them home and explaining the purpose of doing it. But everything you just said is really important to add to that. It's not just the purpose of doing. It's when this device goes home, especially the first few times it goes home, helping the parents understand how to manage that within their own home And it can involve sharing best practices with them. Maybe it's shutting it off, but maybe it's explaining to parents when it should be shut off. That kind of thing really helps, I think, understand how the school and the home are relating around this technology thing. And then the learning management system. So. You said you know something more robust than Google Classroom can you just expand on that a

little. On what I mean when I say something more robust. Sure. The the yeah. So when Google Classroom came into this district it was a consequence of COVID. And a need for teachers to be able to deploy information to students and students to be able to hand in things to teachers. And that was really as far as we were trying to go at that point. And actually, at that point, I was the one who was actually entering all the students into the Google Classroom. So I have no interest in doing that anymore. We actually have a better way of doing that and everything. So when we think about some of these other tools, I think they allow us a different kind of flexibility. And I think honestly, we're really thinking secondary when we're talking about an LMS. The need for something more robust I don't think is a need at the elementary, but I do think it is a need at secondary. And my own children, I've watched them use an LMS to not only use it as a way of moving sort of digital paper back and forth, but also as a way of interacting with the content of their class in a very different way. And those are the things that I think we want to explore. We have a lot of teachers when they come from other districts, they're surprised by the fact that we don't have, especially at the high school, they're surprised that we don't a more robust learning management system and they are often pushing us generally in one direction. But I think we want to address this the same way that we've addressed the device piece, which is like we don't have a mental model of which one we want to use. We want to make sure that it meets the needs of what the teachers feel like they need. And that requires us having those conversations with the teachers to really understand those needs. And we just haven't had time yet to do that. And I don't foresee that happening before the fall. I think that's a year two piece. Okay.

Can you go well, maybe you don't need to pull up the slide on the inputs You know there's a piece here There's parts of this system that interface with the home we've talked about that and And I wonder whether your inputs are capturing that perspective fully. Where is the home parent perspective in this coming in? I mean, to what extent and at what point in this is it coming in?

So the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council is really the vast majority are all parents. Thank you. When we met with them, exactly what you were describing was exactly what we were talking about. A lot of really good conversation when we met with them on what parents are, what their viewpoints are on devices and how they're used and how they're being used at home. And so we spent and got a lot of just, I think, really solid feedback for guidance in this whole process through that. How many?

I mean, the actual committee is pretty large. Who shows up is about... 10 to 20 at any given time, and they represent parents pre-K through 12. And then there's two administrators on the group. The one thing that, the way that I describe the group, and I describe the group to the group this way, because when the coordinators come to present to them, I say they are a very kind group, but they're gonna push us. And they're going to push us hard. And they do. They ask us really difficult questions. They tell us stories. So the stories that we heard as a consequence of devices, they also are really good at when we are not clear with what we're saying. pushing us to articulate that better. So we, in the technology piece, an example of this is that we kept talking about management of devices and we kept talking about a teacher being able to deploy something and everybody being in the, all the children being in the same space. That did not mean anything to them And it actually, for whatever reason, scared them in a different way that I was like, no, no, no. This is actually a good thing. But they're willing to say that to us. We don't know what you're talking about. Stop talking like educators and talk like parents. And so I actually really value that group and the way that they push us. But it is a hard group. I don't think we've ever come out of a meeting and been like, like, you know, your head hurts because they're pushing you to think. And I think that's actually the sign of a good committee.

And then one more. I think when I read other districts that your comparative work is primarily with other public school districts.

Not entirely. No, there were some considerations given that we have some schools around us, even in private schools, that would be fitting a model similar

to ours. Look, it's not that I think they're necessarily doing anything better. I just think broadening our perspective is good. And we do get compared with all kinds of schools in the area. And so keeping that broad perspective in mind is good. That's what I've got. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Leo. Pam, do you want to go next?

Thank you. I trust the two of you, I respect the two of you and I'm guessing by extension your teams as well. So I just wanna start by saying thank you. What we're being asked to vote on tonight is not like all this other stuff, it's like do we say you can go buy all those things? In terms of what device, I trust you, I don't care. I trust your research and your work, fine. What the question that I want us as a board to focus on is why do we need to purchase one-to-one devices for, I'm gonna say K-5, six, eight. High school, yes, please go tomorrow. That's my perspective. The high school, yes. I really question one-to-ones devices in K-2 like so much and in 3-5. So I'd like for us to have these conversations, and I think the thing that is sitting me in it are these two graphs. So do you know NAEP? Is that like a common thing? Okay, I didn't know about it. The

assessment.

Yeah, National Assessment of Educational Progress. Our fourth graders just

took it.

And then they'll take it again in eighth grade. So what I've learned is that this assessment happens in fourth and eighth grade around the country, and it has been the same assessment and the same scoring rubric since 1992. What they have done is, what the social scientists have done, is that they have looked at when one-to-one devices have rolled out in districts, which has happened in different places around the country at different times of year. And basically, this is year four. It happens in reading and in math. This is 1992. This is the year that they go in one-to-one devices. And they can see this in all these school districts. And scores just go down. And then here's grade eight. Yeah, grade eight. Obviously, we can talk about correlation and causation. I don't want to have that conversation, although I'd happily have it. One-to-one devices is not necessarily good, and I don't think it is good for learning, especially at these younger ages. So that's the conversation that I would love for us to have.

Can I ask a clarifying question?

No, of course.

When you say one-to-one device, what does that mean? Oh,

good question. I think what I understand that that means is that every student gets their own device that is theirs. And then in our district currently, in third grade it starts going home every day.

In some places it starts going home. Not all third graders take their device. The reason I ask that question is because I think when we initially developed the fleet of devices, we developed it to say that we would have the number of devices available to equal the same number of students that we have basically. But that we would not provision them in a one-to-one way. So the one-to-one at that point was only 9 through 12. And then as a consequence of COVID, that changed. And the only reason we were able to do what we did during COVID was because we had the number of devices available to be able to do that. I think we would say that... Really currently six through 12, we have our devices set up in a way that's what our mental model of a one-to-one is. So kids have their own device, it's in their possession all the time and it goes home. K-5, we have the number of devices to be one-to-one, but they live in carts. And they don't live in the kids' backpacks. They don't live in those kinds of things, especially in K-2 classrooms. They're not in their desks. They're in charging carts. and the teachers are having the control to be able to say, here's when we're going to go get the devices to do this. So that feels to us, that feels different than, than a, than a one-to-one. Cause I think oftentimes people's mental model of a one-to one is a kid has control of the device at all times and it goes wherever they go. And that's not actually true within it. Like when kids go to specials, they very often don't have their devices with them. You mean elementary? Right. So, so to us, the K five piece, we wouldn't call it a one-toone. We would call it a, the number is the same as the number of students, but the way that we use it is not a one-to-one kind of approach. That's what we would say.

And there are components I think that are important to think about this too. There are some things that just are required. You know, when we talk about assessments and the state, we talk about certain resources that are really only available on devices because that is really the age in which we live in. And so there is definitely that component of of being able to have those available from an efficiency standpoint and being able to say that we're not running wacky schedules all day to try and accommodate losing class time, switching from place to place to place. And so being able to do some of that really is important. I think the way I have begun to approach this is having been in this space now prior and for many years, I've gotten to see kind of the evolution of where we've gone. You know, COVID did happen and COVID kind of thrust upon us, I think, some of this work that both technologically we weren't ready for, and the availability of the technological components to be able to correctly govern. So I can start by saying that, which is as we begin to have this, what I consider to be a really good conversation. I mean, these are things that you know, we want to consider and we want to push on and we want to really look at what are the tools to be able to really do that more effectively and to bring it to a space that really kind of has a safe landing space and a productive, efficient landing space across the board. So that means we are meeting the needs appropriately that require a technological component, but then also really, really being intentional about that use when When they don't need to be used, they don't need be there. So there are those components. I think there's a reality. We have a lot of educational components that require some level of device and in which case what does that look like? Well we want it to be the type of of device that we have correct management and support, and we want to do a lot of procedural thinking around what that actually looks like, which I really do believe is the work that we're really setting up, heading into, especially as this conversation, I would say, across the nation really begins to ramp up more and more. This is not a conversation that is unique to us. It's a conversation that is being had everywhere, which is really healthy across the board for education and kids.

I was just going to say, I misunderstood that one-to-one elementary thing also until our last teaching and learning meeting. We break up into small groups. The table I was at had the same question and kind of conversation, and one of you, I don't remember which, explained it just like that, that a second grader doesn't have an iPad that's solely theirs ever like even when they grab it from the cart they can take any one like they're not so it's it's they

generally do grab the same one because things are stored well they can keep and teachers can probably keep

track of them better that way but but I also and the people at my parents at my table also had misunderstood what one-to-one meant at that age so I appreciate you bringing that up because I hadn't thought to bring that up, because it allowed you to clarify that again. And I think that helped when you explained that at the Teaching and Learning Committee at my table as well for the same reason, that everyone, I think, was picturing like a first grader having their own iPad just like a ninth grader does, which is not the case. It just lives in the cart, and there are enough for each student individually Basically for assessments is the one it was one of the main times you mentioned that each kid would need it at the same time. Yes

You mentioned that like I think you were talking about a key stage one Kid or classroom that some teachers might send them home and some teachers never send them home something like that and you're

talking about

Okay, thank you. Um You mentioned teacher autonomy in that. And it made me think about what we read in the social studies presentation that we just had, which was kind of surprising in a way of taking away teacher autonomy is that what they're moving towards in the social studies department is every teacher teaching the same things and giving the same tests and using the same rubrics. And can see the value in that and so I just wanted to say like one of these things that the district our district values itself on offering or giving to teachers is their autonomy and what happens in their classroom but I do think that with technology and I know that I feel very aligned with the values that both of you are speaking about um or I hear my values reflected in what you're saying I feel like this is a place where. I have concerns about that kind of teacher autonomy that some teachers whatever key stage they're in can send them home and others don't that I think that there should be.

So I think that's what we're trying to get to with the when when we talked about the work that we still need to do this idea of like the age appropriate technology use guidelines as well as the which includes when their devices are being sent home. I think we we are aligned in your thinking that that we need to actually make a decision. about where is the point in a child's career in the district that we're going to say, is going to come home with you. And that the level of autonomy, I do want to clarify one thing about social studies because Paul would be upset if I didn't. The alignment that we're trying to have horizontally within courses, there is still agency and autonomy that teachers have in the how that they teach. It's just not in the what they teach. So we are aligned in what we teach, we're aligned in how we're gonna assess. We're aligned in what we're using as the assessment and what we're using to provide the feedback. But I don't want, like this is a very strong belief of mine that I do not want every single ninth grade english classroom to look exactly the same because they have different kids the teachers have different talents all those kinds of things but we do have things that we have to agree to so i call it defined autonomy like we have given you a sandbox and now you can play in the sandbox but you can't come out of the sandbox the the same thing i think is the the vision of what we're trying to do here um is to say we're going to define the sandbox we haven't landed that plane yet but we are going to define it and whatever grade we say this span of grades, they're not going home. They're not going home and right now that's true K through two. They don't go home. Three through five is where we currently have had this level of agency and that's the place that we're having the conversation to say does that really need to happen? I think where the natural break was there was the device changed. So all of a sudden it gave us something to say, oh, I don't know, maybe a Chromebook should go home, right? And as a consequence of COVID, I think there were some practices that were put in place that I'm not so sure we can't roll back. And that's the piece that we feel like we need more time to be able to have that conversation with teachers to say, does it really need to be going home or is this an old practice of something else? Tied into that conversation is a conversation about homework. So like when should children be doing homework outside of school is also in like all of that is all tied together and like what what is our district philosophy on that. So so we look at that as we're gathering information we're going to make a decision and then we're going to implement the decision. We just can't tell you what the decision is right now because we don't know. We're still gathering the information.

I appreciate that you're looking at that though because now that the device won't change. Right. that

decision might change. Can I just clarify, when you say, and you said this too, now that the device won't change, does that mean if we go iPad everywhere, then is that what you mean? Yeah, just consistency. That's what

I meant,

yeah. Yeah, there's consistency there, so then the ramp up in third grade doesn't have to be the same, right, and everything like that. I mean, I'm not sure that that's actually what influenced the when it went home. We talk in Key Stage as educators, and so we make different decisions by Key Stage. And at this point, we have given a certain level of agency that now we're considering whether that needs to be the level of agency that teachers have in this instance.

So one of the questions I had asked you was why do we have to buy K-12, all of them at the same time? Why can't we like roll them out in phases? The answer you gave me was right now we get 0% financing. I think you gave me a two part answer. We get 0% financing so financially it makes sense. If that is the answer, I would like to see a difference in finances of You know, what would be that difference?

Yeah, and there's more to that answer too. Like really part of our K-2 would we be on cycle anyway. And really within a year, all of those devices would be on their normal cycle out. And so all this does, in addition to that, is bring everything onto the same cycle across the board so that it's predictable across the board with all the same device. So there would be a portion of our K-2 iPads that are already on their way out. And so with that being said, it would make more sense to go ahead and bring everything to a universal cycle at the same time. I

think that's also easier for Luke's

team. It is. So I was

just going to say, I think that was the second part, was if you don't do that, then you're doing iPad and Chromebooks, and that's a lot for a department to manage.

Yeah, it brings everything under a very predictable process. Can I cut in?

Sorry, can I have a, I'm just going to ask all my questions weaving them with everyone else's questions tonight, so hopefully that saves us a few minutes. It's

good,

yeah. One of my questions was on the, thank you, Chris. One of the questions was on the financing part of this. Should the board expect every four years a huge, an abnormally large cash outlay for the initial payment of the next generation of devices that we

So really what you're seeing is stuff that's already really budget across years anyway. Because we actually do have a cycle in place right now. And so this is, while you're seeing it, you're seeing the full four-year cycle component. And so really what we're doing is we're saying, yes, we're getting all the devices here today or this year, I should say. But really, we're not doing anything different over the next four years with the budgeted amounts that are being put out.

Because we're financing it over four years.

Correct. So really those amounts are budgeted across years regardless of whether or not it's a pot of devices here and then a pot of devices the next year. We're just saying all the devices at once and then breaking that up over the four years that we would be working.

And so really, and this is fine, but just to say this in case someone is here in four years, the answer is we have certainty about the financing for four years. Four years from now, Apple might say, you know, our financing option is less attractive and you're going to be asked to approve everything all at once.

Yeah, and then at that point – It's just important for

everyone to like – for some of us to hear that.

Me

and Aaron should

hear that. It could also be – there's a lot of ways to do it. This might be John is –

Special guest star John Brazeal.

Special guest star John Brazil.

Special guest John

Brazil. Long-time listener, first-time caller.

We can purchase it all at once and finance it through a third party if necessary so that our cash flow is over a four-year period. We can always manage the cash over multiple

years.

So up until now, we've basically been on a, for simplification, we've replaced 25% of our devices every year and we pay cash for them. We can replace 100% at once and pay cash over four years to have the same cash flow effectively. These are capital improvement dollars that come out of Fund 4. We allocate dollars over there for this purpose because they're multi-year assets.

Probably the life of the asset.

Yeah, we use the life of the assets.

Okay. Pam, did you have more questions? Those

were good

questions and really helpful answers, I felt like. That answered a lot of my questions and helped me, my thinking here, so thank you. Chris? Do you

want to finish yours?

Oh, did you have more?

Sorry. Keep going. I just had one. Go ahead. Go ahead. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. It's getting late. It's only going to get worse from here. So my only comment is, and this goes back, I don't know, maybe like 30, 45 minutes ago.

Yeah,

I'm hungry. Sorry. It was a comment about this. We asked you guys to accelerate this part of the tech study that came out of the cell phone discussion and that there was this aha moment of, oh, maybe some of our hardware requires people to bring their own devices. And now you're saying that's going to go away. The other part of that is it has to be enforced, right? And this is just for the administration broadly speaking. Someone's going to have to enforce that. There's going to be change management around that too and I just think that's worth saying out loud. That's the piece

that we talked about that we're partnering with

Dan.

Right,

and I heard that and I appreciate it.

And some of that becomes natural from a technology standpoint. the ability to sign into wireless can go away. And so then it becomes, it really becomes a very difficult process that you

would have.

Yeah. I mean, that alone is a big deal. So I'm most likely finished. So thank

you. Hopefully they're not listening to this. They're marching on the office tomorrow.

And there's plenty of other schools that do that. Yeah, I mean, that's not an abnormal practice. I mean, we know schools that do that, so I'm sure you could talk to them about how they communicate it. Anyway,

Chris, your turn. Okay, great questions. Thank you for answering all of them because it really did help me. I like to know the process by which you came to these conclusions. That's really important to me, so I appreciate knowing what you did, who you talked to, everyone that was involved, why you came to these conclusion is super valuable to me. One of the things that also is valuable to me is that you do as much research as possible. I talked about this with, you know, cell phones, you know, in terms of talking to other districts, what they did or didn't do and that kind of thing. So, yeah. When I talk about it in this context, what I mean is how much time do you guys get to spend? I say get to because you're really busy. And I already know that. There's so many responsibilities. But how much time do have to spend, get to spend, sort of require yourself to spend, I would say, on trying to really track for our kids whether or not using devices and in what even despite what they're used for but in the classroom as an educational tool is a benefit or a or not to benefit to their to their learning.

So maybe I'll answer first from my lens. So one of the things that I think we believe as a central office team is our presence in buildings is really important. And that is a philosophy that we hold as an entire team. And so when people ask questions about what's happening in classrooms, I feel like we can speak intelligently to what's happening in classroom because we're in those classroom spaces. And I would say that the majority of the time, what I see happening with devices is what we're trying to really focus on with this idea of this purposeful integration. And I do truly believe that teachers are putting a lot of thought into why they're using a device and why that decision is the decision that they come to at that point. That doesn't mean that we don't also then have conversations about like, let's unpack that. So one of my, like if I was gonna define my role in the district, the top role that I would define is a coach. I spend a lot of time coaching. which means that I spend a lot of time asking questions. And if you ask anybody in this district, they're going to tell you that I ask a lot of questions. And really, that's about helping people to be introspective and helping me to understand better why people make decisions, but helping them to understand, like for them to be able to articulate why they make those decisions. And so sometimes we have to have hard conversations about like this doesn't, like to me as somebody coming in from the outside, this doesn't necessarily feel purposeful. Let's talk through it. And so I think we are engaging in those conversations and having those hard conversations. I've been having conversations, so we're in a budgeting process right now. I've been have conversations with coordinators about why are we spending money on certain tools. So there are some tools that we have used, like when we implement a new instructional practice or something like that, we will often provide funding towards tools that could support a teacher. With those tools at some point we have to sunset some of those things like you now have the talent to be able to teach Those things do you still need those tools? So those are conversations that we're having and and sometimes it depending on where people are in in that learning journey may mean that we need to continue to those tools so a teacher teaching a phonics lesson could, early in their journey around phonics, use a recording or something like that of somebody else doing that work because they're still on that learning journey. At some point we need to sunset that tool because you now have that talent. And actually, we would say that we believe that students learning from humans, like in the space, is better than learning from a recording. But sometimes we have to use those tools as something to help, you know, as an aid. You choose to.

You don't have

to. Right. And we're being very deliberate about those decisions, and that may look different across classrooms. That's my defined autonomy, right? Yeah. So I think we spend an inordinate amount of time in classrooms, and I think we spend a inordinate amount of having those conversations with teachers. Not just about technology, about everything. About teaching and learning. I can spend all day talking about teaching and learning. That's why I knew what I wanted to do with my career because I can spend all this time talking about it and thinking through it, and helping teachers to think through it in a more deliberate way. And so that's what I see my role as being with this. And I think us collectively as a central office team spend a lot of time thinking about those things. We talk about these things in meetings. Like we'll bring up things that we see in spaces and like why is that? My philosophy of leadership is you don't have to agree with every decision I make, but you should understand the decisions that I make. So we should be able to explain those things. If a teacher can explain to me why they need that tool right now, okay. But then how can I help you so that we don't have to use that tool three years from now or something like that? And how can I help to continue to grow? Our whole philosophy of teacher support is around continual growth. So that's a long answer too. Yeah I think we are being very deliberate about this.

Yeah OK but it and that's fantastic. I really appreciate that and I believe it wholeheartedly I've seen it in practice with I know that's who you are Melina. It shows through. It really does. So would you say that you talking one on one with those teachers about why that tool is important at that moment, and them being able to articulate it, and you being able to say that makes sense. Would you say that's the only type of research you're doing, though? I guess, because that's very one-on-one, and that's great, but what about the broader understanding about devices as they, you know, ed tech in general, and how that affects kids long term? We know more and more as we know, as we use more and more tech, right? I just want to know, again, I always want the right people at the table. You guys are educators, which is amazing, but you don't have time to sit here and study all the studies that have come out about this. However, that information is important. So in addition to local understanding of what's happening, I want to know that you guys are aware of and are keeping track of and are holding in priority of knowing the data around technology in our classrooms.

I think it's super important to kind of just state that, you know, as educators, we spend a lot of time with other educators outside of the district. Yeah. Working through workshops and all kinds of different work, specifically on certain topics sometimes, but sometimes open, you know, conversation. Regardless, we do network a ridiculous amount to have these conversations. Yeah. And and that is an important because we're all really more in the same spot than sometimes we even realize There you know what I would say just to add to some of this that I do think is important I spent a lot of time in the buildings talking about this Especially towards the end really almost talking to probably what would be every educator in the district and what I would say is that most of our teachers are very very They want to have this conversation as well. They're not afraid of it And so like I think there's some there's some there some real power in that there's some there're some real Things to be excited about because it's not something that I think You know, it's it's it's gonna be one of those things where just as our team is like hey, here's what's got to happen They want to have that conversation alongside us and so that's huge.

Yeah, it is. I totally agree with that Okay So in my eyes, because these conversations are constantly happening and because you value them and because we know that technology constantly changes, one of the things that I keep thinking about, and I've talked to Jason about it, I've talked to Ben about this now, does it in your eyes make sense for us to have a technology committee that exists all the time rather than just during this study?

Ben and I, we were having this conversation like, wow, will we be done in two years? Exactly. You just

said my whole

point. Will we be done in three years? There is a lot. Exactly. You won't be done. Yeah. I think everything with technology is constantly changing. And so I think, you know, when we wrap up that second year, there's probably a very good chance we're like, well, we need to continue this work for this reason or that or the other. I don't think we're afraid of that. You know, it does exist probably in other

areas. Like all other departments have a curriculum committee that's standing. when you're in self-study, you have a bigger committee and then go to a smaller committee. So I think that could be a model that we continue in the same way that we have. Because the other pieces coming out of this two-year study, we're going to end up with long-range goals. We need somebody to help us implement the long-range goals because the two of us can't.

Exactly.

Well, and technology is

just always changing. So there will always be a new topic to study and discuss.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, great. I love that. I just really like, you know, we do a lot of things in an evergreen model. And I would say technology certainly has to be one of them. So just having a set, you know, all these different stakeholders at the table to, you know, look at our practices, understand best practices by maintaining an understanding of, you know, current you know, trends and understanding is really essential for us as we go forward. So yeah. OK. The other thing I'm going to ask is in the second year of this study and or in the technology committee that will exist afterwards, One of the things that I think is important is in addition to talking to these folks, these parents at the teacher is to maybe do a full survey of all parents in terms of really understanding their attitudes towards technology. Not, you know, Do you know how much your child does or doesn't use it in their class? What is your expectation about their use in class? I really would like you, as an administration, to understand where parents stand on this issue. because if we don't ask in advance, we're going to get told later anyway. You know what I mean? That's what happens. So I don't know what you're hearing now, and I'm glad that you have this subset of parents, but I'm just wondering out loud whether or not just a bigger, wider outlook at all the parents at the different levels and just a really better understanding from parents' point of view how this technology is seen as a positive or maybe not so much as a positive. You're going to get the whole range of answers, right? But it would be great for you guys to have that understanding and watch how that trends over time with different things that you roll out, et cetera. Okay. Let's see. I think I said them all. Oh, my gosh. Did I really do it? Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I appreciate you listening to all those ideas about you know, continuing this work because it really is. Oh, one last thing, of course. AI is another reason why a tech committee should be, I mean, whether that's just part of it or a subset of the tech, I just, we are really going to, like you said, Milena, we don't have a set, like we're going to start it here and we're not going to do it here and we've got to do all that. So this committee is essential for doing that, right? I don't want just the two of you to be sitting at a table doing that, right. So I agree. I think with AI especially, it's time for a committee to really be able to manage on a consistent basis and come up with our values, our systems around how we teach what AI is, how to use it, what it's for, what it isn't for. Those are just essential parts of, just like civics now, we're understanding how important that is. Understanding of AI and technology is just as important now, and we need to understand how to integrate it into our curriculums from K to 12. That's my soapbox. Thank

you. The one minor thought I had, and it is minor, and I'm sure you've thought of it, is when you said the students will be provided with a stylus. Like, I see those being lost so fast.

Yeah, it would be the...

I mean,

most

kids can't keep track of their pencils.

That's so true. I

just want you to consider...

The

cost of those, the necessity of those, the replacement

cost. Yeah, we have a model. We have another school district that will probably follow in this model of providing the first one and then making it available for somebody to get should they lose their own.

And are they necessary to use it or you can use your finger?

Oh, you can use your fingers. You can really use any stylus. Right, okay. Just as like the first one we

would everyone Everyone around the table asked such great questions that all of mine have been answered but I do just want to thank you again, which has been mentioned for Listening to the teaching and learning committee that very clearly said we need more parent communication around expectations for devices at home and Also for listening to us as a board last night year and this fall when we adopted the personal electronic device policy and the law went into effect that we realized that we're violating our own policy. Our kids are bringing their own devices to school because our devices aren't meeting the needs. And we asked you to quickly come up with a solution, and you did. So I really do appreciate the quick work you did in researching and figuring out what the right devices are so that this one year period, so that we figured it out in this one year period and can now be abiding by our own policy. So thank you for that.

Yeah, go ahead. I was really happy to hear that there are no, did you say this? This is the way I inferred this, that really the only time that in K through 2 that every kid has a device at the same time is when they're doing assessments.

Across the grade level? Yeah, across the grade level.

There's no time during instruction in K-2 where the teacher says everybody get out their iPad and they do a

lesson? Within a classroom that may be the case, but not across. All three classrooms would not look the same at any given time.

Okay, but there are lessons that are given on an iPad

that... So I would be cautious in how we phrase that because I'm not sure that I would say There are things where it's like we're engaging with the device. All of us are engaging with the device at the same time based off of dot, dot, dot.

Okay, so what I'll add to what I was saying that that committee could possibly do is really help us get an understanding from our – because what I would like to – if I was a parent, I'd say, well, how much are they using it? And then I thought to myself, do our teachers even understand how much they are using it? So one of the things that I think is important for us to be able to say and have out there in public and be transparent is our students do use it this amount, and it's for these reasons, right? I just wonder if we have a time – Because I think if we said it's eight hours a week, maybe that's way too much for our parent group. And they would say, whoa, we don't like that. So those are the types of things that I'm thinking about is the amount of time spent on a screen is part of this discussion in terms of understanding what our parents, how or what they want with our technology use. I

think that's what we were envisioning when we talked about the guidelines. Like the guidelines aren't just about the home piece. It's also about what does that look like within the school setting. Great.

Are we ready to read the motion? Everyone asked all their questions.

I mean, I guess my question I would love for us to like to hear from people on is there a reason that we would say No, let's do this in two parts Like let's not do how whatever the all of it. Let's not do all of it now. Is there a reason to not? Do that

I would say My understanding is a couple of reasons not to is, one, the financing deal we were offered, and two is the deployment. Right. That's the reason to do it all the time. Right.

Well, and also having a consistent device across the

district. Oh, the replacement cycle. That's what I'll say. So my question is,

is there a reason not to? Those are the reasons to do it.

Right.

Is there a sound reason for us to not do it? I came in here thinking, no way. I didn't want this for lower school. But you have convinced me.

Yeah, they gave really good... Yes, you guys were very helpful in helping us understand. So yeah, I don't see a reason not to unless anyone else does after hearing them tonight.

I don't either. I mean, I do think... I do really want to hear from you how many minutes we're using where the entire class is using an iPad. I do feel like part of the second year of this study needs to really understand the amount of time that the kids are on a screen and us being able to be transparent about that and be able to justify that, et cetera. Because I agree. I'm hesitant. When I think of I don't love the idea of a kindergartner on an iPad. I just don't. Maybe half of America does, and maybe half of America doesn't. I don't know. For me, there are reasons to use it. It's purposeful, and it's fantastic, but it also doesn't have to be there. So I want to know. I just want to hear the justification for using it, and I want to know the amount of time. Because if it's 15 minutes a day, that's very different than if it's two hours a day.

And I think you'll hear that year, too.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

You won't.

I won't. That's why I said you won't. No, I think

you'll come back for that

presentation. I feel comfortable making this vote tonight, but knowing that that's what I need to hear in the future. Right. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely.

Just to say this explicitly, because I know this is true, just to say this explicitly. If we vote to approve this, you guys are looking at all that lower-grade age-appropriate decision-making with an open mind. You're not... Because we voted for this here today, going to be more inclined to use these devices that we've purchased. If you go through this process and you look at it and you say, you know what? We shouldn't be using them. We should never have a situation where everyone's on an iPad in the classroom. You would make that decision even though we bought these devices, right?

There you go. Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great closing statement, Leo. Thank you. Okay, now will you read the motion, Chris?

Yes, I will. Everybody ready?

Yep.

I move to approve the purchase of student and staff computing devices from Apple in the approximate amount of $1,655,000, less the value of any device buybacks, to be financed by Apple at no interest cost and payable over three annual installments. And further, amend the FY 2025-2026 budget to fund payment of the first installment if it becomes due prior to June 30, 2026. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. I think we've asked all of our questions. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you for all your work and research on that, great. And great job answering our questions too. Okay, we're moving into policy. The first policy is a first and second reading tonight for the student advisor to the board. We're doing the first and second reading because we need it approved prior to selecting the next student rep to the board. So Chris, why don't you read the motion and then we'll see if we have questions.

I move that we approve policy JFBB, student advisors to the board with the recommended changes. Second.

Okay, did anyone have questions or comments about this one?

My only wondering is on number 10. It says meet with students of diverse identities from Clayton High School, Wynand Middle School, and all Clayton elementary schools on a regular basis. The only school that seems to be missing from that list is early childhood which i don't believe that our student rep engages with currently but is there any reason or occasion where that would you would want to include that or or the adults or the educators um that's a really good point it just seems like we We listed everybody else but not them. But maybe that's intentional because of the age group of the children at the early childhood. It's an open question. I'm not advocating that we need to include them or not. It's just we should be thoughtful about why they aren't there.

Good point. It wouldn't be the student rep's role to meet with the parents.

Right. But the students.

I'm sure Nina would have no problem running. it sounds delightful

we all love doing that so my only question is do you just you know and the and the early childhood center or just change it to

all of our schools or you know yeah i mean do we think it's realistic that well that's my high school student board rep would meet with early childhood and

maybe that's the reason why it's not there and i don't even know if it's appropriate that's the other yeah That's why I asked the question. So are we

all, I think it's a great question, but are we all okay leaving it off? Yes. Do you think that's best? Keeping

it off.

Keeping it off. Okay.

But at least it's raised the question. But I'm

glad you did bring that up because I hadn't thought about that. Right. Yeah,

Pam. The only other point that we had is that number 11 was changed and I don't know if that was pointed out to everybody. It did say represent the views of all students while participating in board meetings and Stacy and I suggested to take out the word all because that's just not realistic.

Okay. Everybody else okay with it? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No? Okay, that motion passes. Now, the second reading of policy KH, the public gifts to the school. We read that motion, please.

I move that we approve policy KH, public gifts to schools with the recommended changes.

Second. Okay, that's been moved and seconded. Any comments or questions? I

would make a quick comment. Oh, sure. There is edits from the first reading. Oh,

right. And

there was one edit explained in the narrative that was presented to you. There was a couple more edits that were made today.

Okay. One of

those is to the title of the section that's formerly said Gifts to the District Foundation. That now says Gifts to the Clayton Education Foundation. Clayton Education

Foundation, good, thank you.

The second edit is the definition of word Gift which was truncated to just really refer to donations bequests, etc Without the ending part that said to the foundation of the district. It's really a correct corrected definition of That term doesn't really change the meeting but it's how a definition should be written so with that I think we've enumerated all the the edits and

Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments about this second reading? I'll make a comment. Go ahead.

On the wellness committee, we're working on the triennial assessment and you'll hear about it next month. And one of the things that when you go through and you talk about all the various things that are required by law for us to think about in terms of health and wellness on our campuses is it came up that should we have in policy that we wouldn't accept gifts from places like you know, Marlboro, you know what I mean? That kind of thing. And I really thought about it. Where? Cigarettes.

Marlboro. Yeah, Marlboro. Not a common occurrence? Like we're not going

to take, Jack Daniels is not going to be a sponsor for our soccer field is what I'm saying, right? I'm just saying. But I don't think so. I mean, that's why I'm bringing it up. The actual guidelines that we're supposed to be following, it says, like, do you have... You know, we don't have to do this. We could just get a no on this part of the survey. But it says, do you have a policy around, you know... not promoting things that are unhealthy, basically, is what it said. Not those words, but basically that's what it is. And so I thought about this policy when we were going through that, and I would say number three is appropriate for the school environment. I would hope that would include that we would, of course, never take a donation from Jack Daniels, but I just want to throw out there that it is something that the people that think about health and wellness in schools have thought about. is, you know, let's think about who we're accepting gifts from because we wanted that to be appropriate and promote health and wellness versus the opposite. And it does say...

And the way we deal with that is that we bring those to you. Our donations are here so that the board can accept or reject those, and that would be one of the considerations.

Exactly. Exactly. Yes, that would. And it

also says in deciding whether to accept it, the superintendent and the board have to agree that it's appropriate. Exactly.

I feel fine with it. I thought about it a lot, but I just wanted to point out that health and wellness comes into everything, all these policies, including gifts. And that's great. It should.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. And just one more is rescinding policy FFA because it's been merged into policy KH.

So we read that. I move to rescind policy FFA memorials on facilities and grounds.

Second.

Okay. Any questions

or comments about why that's being rescinded? All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? No. Okay. That passes. And, okay, sorry, now I lost my place. Okay,

oh, now we're moving to consent. Will you read that motion, please? I move that we approve consent agenda items 7.2 through 7.9.

Before we vote, I just want to read about a donation, which we always do. publicly out of consent. On behalf of the district, the Board of Education would like to thank the Runnels family for their generous donation of $1,200 to the Social Worker Discretionary Fund. So thank you to that family. Very generous donation. All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? I just have one comment. Oh, sorry. So I just wanted to point out the Cooperative Boys Volleyball Scholarship. So that's yet another example of our cooperation with other school or sponsorship. Yeah. It's another example where our schools are cooperating with other schools to give our students opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have because we don't have the participation numbers that we need. So we've seen this now in girls' field hockey, in our football program at the high school, and now in boys' volleyball. We do it also in academic programs like Catalyst. So it's a good thing. So even though we can... We have all these opportunities to give our kids the existing opportunities that we're expecting to have when they get to certain levels of the school. And I appreciate that the district, through Steve Hudson and through you, Nisha, and in the case of Catalyst, through the curriculum coordinators and everybody else, the pre-professional track stuff that's happening, that we still have those.

Thank you for pointing that out. Wait, did we vote or not? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Okay, any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes. So now we're on board communications. I will start with Ben or Leo on CRSWC. I think you had a meeting.

Yeah, we had a CRSWC meeting, a couple items on the agenda. We had a good discussion around replacing the scoreboard or the swimming timing system that's used for competitions and I suspect that may come up for a vote at our next meeting, but we had a good conversation around it. And... Of course. And you know so everything's going great.

OK. Anything to add. Chris did you have a governing council meeting you want to tell us about that.

Yes. The governing council meeting several things. First we got a PAC update which we always do but this one what they're trying to do is restructure PAC. They found that many participating partner districts don't have a very robust PAC within their district so now the PAC at SSD is trying to do a better job of sort of centralizing all the PAC and having so there's going to be some outreach around that and some more discussion but they're really trying to reinvent that program so that it touches more families because in certain districts it's touching no families so they're trying to really help that process and We're lucky that we have what we have, and each district can continue to have whatever they want, but they're trying to do a better job of making sure that every family in SSD is aware that there is a parent committee that they can go to for... The other thing we did was we, oh, they discussed the FY25 audit was clean. So that was great. That was good news to hear. And we did the board of election, the SSD board of education elections. One was contested and we have to vote again, even though we voted three times, never changed. So we got to vote again in June and we'll do that. But otherwise we have some new board of education members over there and-

Thank you, I had a PTO council meeting I Would say they They talked they are still kind of in continuous talks like with Gina about the new website and how to use their You know each PTO has kind of a web page within the school and they're adjusting to how to use that with the new website but I think that the new website actually, as they're realizing, is gonna be much more useful and user-friendly for them to push out information. That was part of the conversation I would say. The other part was around Prop O and how PTOs can help support Prop O. They ultimately all decided, each school kind of had different feelings about it, but they decided as a collective group that each school's PTO is doing a... Dough, D-O-U-G-H for Prop O night. They are doing a Mod Pizza fundraiser night, or day and night, I should say. I think on March 31st, you might have seen it on social media, where they are donating, Mod Pizza will donate a percentage of the proceeds to Prop O in name of all the school's PTOs. So I think it's great that as a collective group, they've kind of all decided to do something together. I also wanted to highlight, a few of us went to the Celebration of Black Achievement, which is just and I'm sorry Cameron's not here to hear this, but those of us that attended, who I think would all agree, it is a really great event. I would love to work on getting more people there because I actually would feel bad that more people didn't see this. It's really great that we highlight our own black alumni and their successes. And they are so proud. Oh, and our current students, and current students. The alumni are so proud to have come from Clayton High School. They each every year talk about that a lot and they have such great memories and relationships with teachers and specific specific memories of classes and teachers that got them to where they are today anyway. And yes we involve our students from elementary on up in the program and I just think it's great. So. Thank you to those board members that attended that as well and community members. And also just wanted everyone to know we had a great meeting with some former Board of Education members to educate them on Prop O and took them on a tour of Gay Field to see the facilities there, which I hadn't actually toured the facilities yet either. So that was eye opening for me as well to see the needed changes over there. And it's always great regardless to engage with former board members. Like Dr. Helsher mentioned Frank earlier. Because

you're almost one.

Because I'm almost one. But I think they have such historical knowledge to share, which is valuable. So I always enjoy getting together with that group. So that was good too. Anybody else attended? I don't think so. Okay, we can adjourn, Chris. Move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second.