September 23, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening. Adequate notice has been given. We'll start with the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Can I get a... So for those what we're going to start with the tax rate hearing and then we'll go into the business meeting for those that are watching at home here. So can I get a motion to approve the

agenda.

Second.

All those in favor. Any opposed. Great. All right. Tax rate hearing. Pat. Welcome.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the tax rate hearing for the 2026 property year. This tax rate will be in place or requested for the 26-27 school year. Each year we're required to present... Got it. Apologies for that. Each year we're required to set a tax rate by October 1st. Today we're gonna be discussing some general information, what produces our revenue sources, our assessed valuation history, our operating tax history, impact of some abatements, some tax relief programs, and then we'll be proposing a tax rate. As we discussed, each year we ask for a tax rate to be adopted by October 1st. The Missouri State Auditor's Office does ratify and approve our tax rates. We do present these to the Auditor's Office before we complete a recommendation to the Board of Education. This is also in conjunction with the numbers that are presented by the St. Louis County Assessor's Office. This year, those numbers were provided to us by September 4th. Typically, we receive those dollars and that new information by September 15th. That puts us into a very compressed timeline. So we do have this conversation relatively quickly. We start with preliminary numbers in July. We update those in September. And then final assessed valuations actually come out in December. How our tax rate works. So typically, the assessed valuation times the tax rate gives us our revenue. But as assessed valuation falls, the tax rate could potentially increase and vice versa. So if assessed valuation increases like we saw last year, our levy does decline, which produces our revenue. We are limited to our new construction. So any kind of renovations or additions to a home or commercial property, we are able to capture those new revenue sources. And also we're limited to the consumer price index or 5%, bless you. We also have voter approved opportunities, which we are not discussing tonight. Assessed valuations. So if you see assessed valuation on your tax roll, you're not gonna see the value of your actual home. What you're gonna see is a percentage of that home. So typically you'll see 19%. So if you wanna do the math, take the assessed valuation divided by 19%, which will give you appraised value. Do not ask the assessor's office to correct that if you think your home value's too low. So assessed valuation. So this year we are looking at assessed valuation of one point seven to eight billion dollars. That is slightly less than what we had last year. There were a significant amount of protests that occurred this year. So there is an adjustment in the amount that we're reporting here but you will see us upward trend again toward growth and assessed valuation. We see that over the last couple of years. What you can see in the 23 and 24 years is the differences between revenue growth and then reassessment. We do go through reassessment every other year. We are in a non-reassessment year. Assessed valuations, you can see that trend here in our historical data as well. You'll see that there's typically these two-year jumps in assessed valuations. Reassessment by classification. So you see that this year there's an extremely limited amount of new assessment that's particularly seen through new construction. There's also you'll see that this is a slight decline, which is an adjustment between last year's September figures and the December 31st figures from 2025. New construction, this is where you'll see a slight amount that we see this year. We did receive about $2 million of new construction this year. It was completely limited to residential and that's how you'll see that in the blue bar. Historically, you'll see more commercial industry. We did confirm this by reaching out to the local municipality to make sure that we weren't missing anything or assessed valuations may have been underreported. We also asked the assessor's office as well to confirm that information. The property tax rates, as we're recommending, you'll see that we are showing a small recruitment this year. I'm sorry, a small voluntary rollback. So operating tax rates, 3.0618. Commercial is 3.9068. Personal property is 3.933 and a blended rate. We do set tax rates by every class. So whenever we talk about residential, commercial, personal property and blended rate, the blended rate is what we use with the Missouri State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. So if you see any of those documents, they're going to be referring to a blended rate. Every other item, we do live in a multi-rate county, so we have to calculate all four of these categories. We don't have agricultural, so if you talk to a peer and they have a small amount and they say they have four classes, they're probably right, we don't. Debt service is left consistent at 51 cents. We're also including a voluntary rollback of about a little more than six cents. This is intended to keep our residential costs class tax levy consistent with the previous year. And you'll see that here, residential rate did not, we are not recommending an increase in residential rate. The calculation would have permitted us to increase our residential tax rate by a little less than seven cents. Taxes by class. And then you'll see that here, 25 and 26. You can see that those two rates for commercial and personal property, I'm sorry, commercial and residential are relatively stable. Debt service, again, you can see our historical figures. You can see where we rolled back our debt service about three or four years ago. We did that because our responsibilities to our debt service had lessened and we reduced the burden to our community accordingly. tax billings and collections. You can see the amount that was expected last year. There was a significant amount of protests. We're seeing that in our collection right here. We hope that this because those protests have already been settled, we don't expect to see those continued in the 26-27 school year. Revenue growth by class. Again, this is where we're looking at where are we receiving our funding from? Are we getting that through reassessment? And you can see that in our odd years. Are we getting that new construction, which is our green bar, and you can see that's limited. And then personal property changes. We also do have tax relief programs in our district. So we have some TIF projects and tax abatements through 353 programs and chapter 100s. The total tax relief that impacts the school district is approximately $1.6 million. We do wanna bring that up, they do exist, it does impact our community. We do watch when those are scheduled to expire. So proposed levy, this is the operating levy that does not include debt service, so this is slightly less, so if you add 51 cents to every one of these line items, you'll get the recommendation that'll be proposed this evening. We are maintaining the voluntary rate. You'll see that those voluntary rollbacks, they're reported twice. The reason is because the 16 cents in residential is what we've been holding historically as a rollback from when we passed our previous tax increase. So we are maintaining the rollback that we've historically held as a commitment to our community. And then we are separating out the additional 7 cents of rollback because we want to draw special attention to that to keep our tax levy consistent. Are there any questions?

Any questions for Matt? I'll just say, Matt, I really appreciate the work that went into this. The board talked at the board table about the potentially looking at ways to voluntarily roll back the tax rate on the residential side in the spring. Talked about it a little bit more over the summer. You stepped right into that in the middle of that discussion, plus got some data late in the game. And so I think the way this all pulled together, I really appreciate that work. And I think this is a really nice way to provide some level of tax relief to our residential taxpayer that otherwise they wouldn't have been able to experience. So we appreciate you helping us provide that relief as well. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Any public comments on the tax rate? No. All right. Then could I get a motion to adjourn the tax rate hearing? You just said that's right. Sorry, we just went to a journey this year. That's right. We're joining the tax rate hearing. Good job, everyone. All right, then we'll start all over round two. Adequate notice has also been given for the business meeting tonight. And can I get No, we don't need to. All right. Then any public participation? We do have a public participation tonight. So who is speaking from the 5K group?

All

right.

Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for giving us a few minutes tonight. I am Celeste Gillette, and I'm currently planning the Clayton Community 5K Run Walk, which will take place on Sunday morning, October 18th, which is homecoming morning. members of the clayton community 5k kathleen gunn and roger shirk are here with me tonight to show our support i want to thank the school district for its support as we have worked through the planning process there have been a lot of details to figure out and i truly appreciate everyone's willingness to help us navigate any school related issues we had john brazil help in the beginning with liability insurance nisha from the very start uh the support from Matt now with a lot of the pieces that had to fit together. So we wanted to show our thanks and appreciation. The race is going to start and finish in Shaw Park and our goal was to create a fun family event that brings together schools families businesses organizations the entire Clayton community. The race will benefit two wonderful organizations the Clayton Community Foundation and the Clayton Education Foundation. Thank you to the Clayton Education Foundation, particularly Ali Rossini and the people who work on the foundation for the guidance and encouragement along the way, and especially to communications with the district for advertising the race. So our big ask right now is we just need people to show up. Currently, we have about 113 people registered. We plan to limit it to 250 residents, or not even residents, but signups, This is our first rodeo here, and we're not sure how it's going to go. So we want to stay on top of things. So we do plan to limit it to 250. So please get signed up. We would love to see our school board members, district staff, teachers, families, and students out there with us. You don't have to be a runner. You can walk it. You can bring your family. You can volunteer. Even just come and cheer us on. This is meant to be a celebration of the community. So please sign up, spread the word, and encourage your friends and family to join us for the first Clayton Community 5K. Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you all at the starting line. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I think it's really great that this is that you guys are doing this. So thanks for thanks for volunteering for the community. And there's a decent chance that I've already signed up, but Roger is going to confirm that for me. So all right. Okay. Normally, we would turn it over to the superintendent for her update. But let me just start by saying something that will hopefully pop up on the screen.

The slide deck.

Well, I'll just talk a little bit while she's setting that up. I did want to take a moment here and just recognize that last week the Board of Education shared the news that Dr. Patel shared with us her intent to retire at the end of this school year, and there will be lots of time to celebrate Dr. Patel and her many accomplishments and her contributions to the district. over the course of the year, but did want to give the community a little bit of an update on how we're thinking about the search for our next leader and how that's going. So right now, we have launched the RFP process for our search firm, which we view as sort of step one of this process, partnering with a great executive search firm that specializes in K through 12 searching for superintendents. That process started on Monday morning. Firms that wish to apply have there's a two week window that they have to apply. The board will go through a process to select that firm in the in the weeks following that deadline. From there, you know, probably mid to late October, we'll start the actual certs itself. Our goal is to have this wrapped up and find our, you know, have solidified our next leader, you know, in the winter, hopefully before winter break. It may slip a little bit past winter break, but the winter for sure. And that gives us plenty of time for our next superintendent to work right alongside with Dr. Patel. and us and the entire team to have a smooth transition during second semester so that when it's July 1, 2027, the next person is ready to go. And so just want the community to know that we do, as we said in the letter that we shared, this is arguably and probably the most important thing that a Board of Education does is selecting a superintendent. it's one that we take it's a responsibility we take very seriously i think we're all humbled by the a little bit by the idea of selecting our superintendent but we're excited to take on the adventure here and so look forward to sharing more information in the weeks and months to come And with that, we'll turn it over to our current superintendent,

Dr. Patel. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for giving that update to the community. Appreciate it. Okay, going into the superintendent update, I always want to start off with some student highlights. So tonight, we want to highlight Clayton High School, and I am so proud to say we have 28 students who earn recognition through the National Merit Program, 15 Clayton High School students were merit semifinalists, and 13 were commended scholars. That makes a total of, like I said earlier, a lot of students. And I can't do the math right now. But I just want to say that these students actually took the PSAT in junior year. And based on those results, they qualified for this. Our merit semifinalists will now go for the finalist status and have a chance to win a scholarship. So we're very proud of that. And that's a lot of hard work and dedication. And I know Manu, our student school board rep always has lots to say about that as well. But I just want to congratulate everyone. And we will formally, typically in the past, we've had them come here and we've done a formal recognition. But if you recall, we're going to do our recognizing our own ceremony. And so they will be in attendance on the November 18th at Clayton High School where we'll make it more formal. So congratulations to them. Next, I do want to highlight, I know it was a couple of weeks back, but on September 4th, we had our first professional learning day and it was an all district day. We had content learning and we had building learning. And one of the things that I've always said is we do amazing professional learning, but do we have data to show what our staff thinks from it? So after every professional learning day, they take a survey and it's the kickup survey. And for this year, we intentionally put in two questions that said, does the work align with our strategic plan goals, and how is it reflected in your daily practice? We've always had that question, but one of the new ones we added was the strategic plan. And so 97% of our staff who responded said that the learning that they had that day aligned with the strategic plan goals And 95% said that they had opportunities to reflect on what they learned and how to apply it to practice. So overall, we felt really good about the day. Another piece we also had was all of our classified staff also spent time learning about the profile of the Clayton learner. And I know Heike is sitting here, and I know she participated as well. And we had a lot of positive feedback, including our classified staff. Because as we've said, every adult in our district is a learner. And so overall, it was a very meaningful and productive day. And I look forward to the next professional learning day. And I think it's the reason I share this with everyone today, because I think it's important for the community to know when the students are at home, what our staff is engaged in. And that is really important work that we're doing and a lot of planning. So I want to thank the teaching and learning team for putting all of this together, because I know it's not easy work. So thank you for that. And then finally, I wanted to give a quick update on the Bridge Campus. And the reason I wanna do this is because I know that there are families out there, especially the Glenridge families who have questions, who have wonderings and are just like, what's going on? What's happening next? So just a quick reminder, if there are any questions, we have a dedicated website that has all the updates to it. There's an FAQ sheet that really drills down on some of the specific questions. But as of now, we're still in conversation with Washington University with leasing the space for Vaughn University campus. We have not finalized an agreement yet. We're working through insurance requirements for the lease. So that is where we are currently as of today. In the meantime, I do want the families to know that the planning has not stopped. There's a lot of details that we continue to work out. If you recall, there's an RFP out there right now for transportation. So once we have that determined, the transportation company will come and try and figure out what the proper routes would be to the Fontbonne campus, where the bus stops would be, when the start time and the end time of the school days would be, or if that needs to change, et cetera. So that's in the works. We've been talking with Mike Parkinson, our Director of Safety and Security. We've been talking to our design team. We just had a meeting last week about what safety and security looks like not only in the new elementary school but also at Bridge Campus. So those are meetings we continue to have. We've also been thinking about the tours, right? Like we want families to come and look at the bridge campus as early as possible, but we're not gonna be able to do that till we know what the construction timeline is. But we're hoping in May, we can bring families in, take a tour, including the staff. We are working with the staff on what it means to pack up your classroom, the instructional supplies from small details like where are the boxes going to be? Where do I go find boxes? How do I label them? How are they going to be moved? So all those are the logistics that we continue to work on. And you may not hear about it, but that is going along in addition to trying to finalize the lease with WashU. In addition, one thing that we have also added to engage our families, especially at Glenridge, and we're very happy to do this, is every month there's a PTO meeting at Glenridge. We are going to have our board rep, Chris Nguyen, attend each of those BTO meetings, and she will be a direct link with the families at Glenridge and the school board. So in addition to obviously Dr. Murdoch being at the PTO meetings, we'll now have a board representative there. And so she would give an update if there are any questions or things we need to hear more about, she would be the direct connection there. And I will obviously try to meet as many as possible, as well as Matt, our CFO, who is overseeing all the projects. But we just thought that was a good link to make sure our families stay connected and feel they have a voice in it. So thank you, Chris, for doing that because I know that's once a month, 4th Thursday, 2.30 to 3.15. We send you the calendar invites. But we want to make sure that we're building not only a wonderful new school, but we continue to build the confidence, the trust, and the strong communications with our family. So please trust that. And then finally tonight we have a presentation. We're gonna hear from Dr. Kelly Sollberger, our assistant superintendent of HR who oversees our partnership with the special school district as well as John Turner, our SSD director. I believe Carla will also be at the table who is our new coordinator so you will get to meet her officially if you have not done so already. Together, they're going to share an update on the progress we have made with this partnership and I'm really excited to hear all of the work because I hope you can see this is truly the essence of what a partnership looks like and the growth that has happened with this over the past few years. So with that, we look forward to the presentation later tonight. But before that, I'm going to hand it over to Manu because I know he has a lot of information to share as well.

Dr. Patel. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for giving that update to the community. Appreciate it. Okay, going into the superintendent update, I always want to start off with some student highlights. So tonight, we want to highlight Clayton High School, and I am so proud to say we have 28 students who earn recognition through the National Merit Program, 15 Clayton High School students were merit semifinalists, and 13 were commended scholars. That makes a total of, like I said earlier, a lot of students. And I can't do the math right now. But I just want to say that these students actually took the PSAT in junior year. And based on those results, they qualified for this. Our merit semifinalists will now go for the finalist status and have a chance to win a scholarship. So we're very proud of that. And that's a lot of hard work and dedication. And I know Manu, our student school board rep always has lots to say about that as well. But I just want to congratulate everyone. And we will formally, typically in the past, we've had them come here and we've done a formal recognition. But if you recall, we're going to do our recognizing our own ceremony. And so they will be in attendance on the November 18th at Clayton High School where we'll make it more formal. So congratulations to them. Next, I do want to highlight, I know it was a couple of weeks back, but on September 4th, we had our first professional learning day and it was an all district day. We had content learning and we had building learning. And one of the things that I've always said is we do amazing professional learning, but do we have data to show what our staff thinks from it? So after every professional learning day, they take a survey and it's the kickup survey. And for this year, we intentionally put in two questions that said, does the work align with our strategic plan goals, and how is it reflected in your daily practice? We've always had that question, but one of the new ones we added was the strategic plan. And so 97% of our staff who responded said that the learning that they had that day aligned with the strategic plan goals And 95% said that they had opportunities to reflect on what they learned and how to apply it to practice. So overall, we felt really good about the day. Another piece we also had was all of our classified staff also spent time learning about the profile of the Clayton learner. And I know Heike is sitting here, and I know she participated as well. And we had a lot of positive feedback, including our classified staff. Because as we've said, every adult in our district is a learner. And so overall, it was a very meaningful and productive day. And I look forward to the next professional learning day. And I think it's the reason I share this with everyone today, because I think it's important for the community to know when the students are at home, what our staff is engaged in. And that is really important work that we're doing and a lot of planning. So I want to thank the teaching and learning team for putting all of this together, because I know it's not easy work. So thank you for that. And then finally, I wanted to give a quick update on the Bridge Campus. And the reason I wanna do this is because I know that there are families out there, especially the Glenridge families who have questions, who have wonderings and are just like, what's going on? What's happening next? So just a quick reminder, if there are any questions, we have a dedicated website that has all the updates to it. There's an FAQ sheet that really drills down on some of the specific questions. But as of now, we're still in conversation with Washington University with leasing the space for Vaughn University campus. We have not finalized an agreement yet. We're working through insurance requirements for the lease. So that is where we are currently as of today. In the meantime, I do want the families to know that the planning has not stopped. There's a lot of details that we continue to work out. If you recall, there's an RFP out there right now for transportation. So once we have that determined, the transportation company will come and try and figure out what the proper routes would be to the Fontbonne campus, where the bus stops would be, when the start time and the end time of the school days would be, or if that needs to change, et cetera. So that's in the works. We've been talking with Mike Parkinson, our Director of Safety and Security. We've been talking to our design team. We just had a meeting last week about what safety and security looks like not only in the new elementary school but also at Bridge Campus. So those are meetings we continue to have. We've also been thinking about the tours, right? Like we want families to come and look at the bridge campus as early as possible, but we're not gonna be able to do that till we know what the construction timeline is. But we're hoping in May, we can bring families in, take a tour, including the staff. We are working with the staff on what it means to pack up your classroom, the instructional supplies from small details like where are the boxes going to be? Where do I go find boxes? How do I label them? How are they going to be moved? So all those are the logistics that we continue to work on. And you may not hear about it, but that is going along in addition to trying to finalize the lease with WashU. In addition, one thing that we have also added to engage our families, especially at Glenridge, and we're very happy to do this, is every month there's a PTO meeting at Glenridge. We are going to have our board rep, Chris Nguyen, attend each of those BTO meetings, and she will be a direct link with the families at Glenridge and the school board. So in addition to obviously Dr. Murdoch being at the PTO meetings, we'll now have a board representative there. And so she would give an update if there are any questions or things we need to hear more about, she would be the direct connection there. And I will obviously try to meet as many as possible, as well as Matt, our CFO, who is overseeing all the projects. But we just thought that was a good link to make sure our families stay connected and feel they have a voice in it. So thank you, Chris, for doing that because I know that's once a month, 4th Thursday, 2.30 to 3.15. We send you the calendar invites. But we want to make sure that we're building not only a wonderful new school, but we continue to build the confidence, the trust, and the strong communications with our family. So please trust that. And then finally tonight we have a presentation. We're gonna hear from Dr. Kelly Sahlberger, our assistant superintendent of HR who oversees our partnership with the special school district as well as John Turner, our SSD director. I believe Carla will also be at the table who is our new coordinator so you will get to meet her officially if you have not done so already. Together, they're going to share an update on the progress we have made with this partnership and I'm really excited to hear all of the work because I hope you can see this is truly the essence of what a partnership looks like and the growth that has happened with this over the past few years. So with that, we look forward to the presentation later tonight. But before that, I'm going to hand it over to Manu because I know he has a lot of information to share as well.

Yeah. So last meeting, I ended my report by talking about the profile of a Clayton learner and how it's being used in classrooms. And continuing this trend, I got to see the collaborative competency this or last week outside of classrooms through my meetings with White Island Student Council and the Principal's Advisory Council at CHS. So I met with Y-Don Stucco last Wednesday, and I first asked students about their opinions on win time, which replaced PAC on A and B days. And most of them preferred PAC, actually, and disliked how they had to sign up for SEL and academic win time at the start of each week, in addition to the limited space available for each sign-up spot. But it's only the beginning of the year. And I'll continue to hear their thoughts on win time throughout the school year. So, yeah. And next, adding to the interviews I'm currently doing, I asked them about the Clayton Center and their thoughts on membership. So they said that they like the facilities and overall quality of the center but sometimes it's crowded. And they also said that a free eighth grade membership would make more sense than the current seventh grade membership as seventh graders are less mature. And apparently kids are not even allowed to use the gym members gym gym equipment under the age of 14 without parental supervision. So and also. Switching the free membership year to eighth grade has been the consensus in the interviews I've conducted with students at CHS as well. And I've also been hearing about creative ways that students have been entering the center without a membership. So more on that later.

Yeah.

And then finally, I asked White Island students part of the STUCO about iPads and they were mixed feelings. And many students mentioned how hard it is to use Google Docs, Google Slides, and other Google apps instead of the browser versions as the apps have fewer features. And they also said that the iPads have less battery life, that they're harder to type with, and that's largely because of the keyboard. And on a more positive note though, they said that the iPods are more efficient, they're lighter, and they're more versatile. iPads were also the main topic of discussion at the principal's advisory council meeting last Thursday. And the high school students I talked with voiced some of the same concerns as middle school students, such as the battery life and how apps are harder to use. But they also had possible solutions to share. Some students proposed possibly replacing the keyboards. or having power banks or bigger cords for the iPads to charge easier. And the topic of teachers using laptops while students are adjusting to computers was also discussed, which led to conversations about teacher AI usage and how some teachers use AI to grade students' work or come up with lesson plans, particularly in the language department. And we talked about how this creates a double standard as students are prohibited from using AI while there's no policy against teacher AI usage. And so to further discuss the iPads and AI, I will be meeting with Dr. or Mr. Heidert soon, and he will be attending our next principal's advisory council meeting. So overall, I've gotten some great feedback from students across the district over the past week. In addition to talking with some captain fifth graders today which I'll talk about in the next meeting. I'm excited to hear from students at Merrimack next week.

Man that's a lot. You really covered a lot of ground there. Thank you. Yeah. OK. First and only presentation of the night is our special school district presentation so. Kelly, John, and Carla, come on down.

Good evening, everyone. I'm excited to introduce our new coordinator to the district. Carla Ezell started with us in August and we are so glad to have Carla joining the team. She's been a great addition to our administrative group. And then I'm also joined by John Turner, our director. John and I have been able to work together the last three years on this presentation. So we're excited to have Carla join us. But it's starting to feel like we kind of have our groove and we know what we're doing each year when we talk about the partnership agreement. I also want to thank Special School District Chiquita Moore. She's our Chief Partner Districts Officer. She's sitting back in the audience showing her support. We're so glad that she could join us, and she's a constant support to both John and myself and all of our staff in this partnership that we have between the two districts. Oh, we got it. All right, so the partnership agreement, what it is. It is more than just a way that we distribute responsibilities between the two districts. It's really that idea that we have shared systems, expertise, communication and accountability, and it all stems to making sure that Clayton's strategic commitments are passed on to all of our students. So that's really what the purpose of it is. There's also compliance components that form more or less the foundation of this partnership agreement, but the true impact that we find from the partnership agreement is the experiences that our students and our families have. So if the partnership agreement is working the way it should, all students, whether they are students who are receiving special education services or they're students who are not, are going to have the same kind of integrated experience in our district. So that's like the true purpose of this partnership agreement. And so what we do is every year we look at what we've been doing and we say, yes, these things work. And then we say, you know, these things are areas that we want to continue to grow in as well. One of the things that you'll see on this slide and hopefully you'll gather throughout the presentation tonight is we looked at Clayton's three strategic goal areas, so a place for everyone to grow as learners and head and heart, as well as SSD strategic areas, which were equity, commitment, and collaboration. And the partnership agreement is really the way that we marry those two priority areas from both districts together to make sure that we are meeting the needs of all of our students so that they have that really integrated experience. The other thing I think that's important to take from this slide is that the partnership agreement is taking the requirements that we have. So that might be requirements under IDEA. It might be things like compliance with the Missouri State Plan, our local compliance plan. There's also a Regulation 15 that SSD has that governs how we interact as partner districts through that general assurance document. But those are those foundational areas that are providing us the structure for our collaboration. There are, they're usually referred to as seven areas but John and I thought it's kind of more eight areas. So the eight areas that we are gonna review tonight are staffing, teaching, learning and accountability, collaboration, responsibilities and resources, student services, data and technology, transportation, career and technical education. So those are the normal seven areas but really there's that eighth area which is the assessment and evaluation that we have a shared review process there too. So those are areas we're gonna talk about. This organizational chart just gives you a visual of kind of the way that our partnership is structured. One of the things that came up in board pre-planning is like, what are the differences between this and like previous partnership agreements? Well, one change on this is Carla Ezell is our new coordinator. So you'll notice her name up there. And we also do not have an instructional coach anymore. So that is not on here as well. So those are kind of two changes from that organizational chart. I'm going to turn it over to Carla.

All right. Thank you all for having us this evening. Um, so this slide just outlines a little bit more of the details about the partnership itself. So one thing that I want to note here is that we want to make sure that we keep students at the center and the forefront students, strengths, voice, and goals. Um, and you can see that, uh, the family and IEP team are connecting Clayton school supports on the left-hand side that are bulleted there. to an SSD specialized supports outlined on the right side. And the two of us, John and myself, are really the ones that are primarily responsible for coordinating those efforts within the partnership. All right, so here we're gonna talk a little bit about students with IEPs. And on the next slide, we're gonna look at staffing. So here you can kinda see at a glance the demographics across the five Clayton schools. So the number of students with IEP's at Clayton High School, Y down and then across the three elementary schools. So in total 285 students. Okay, on this slide as far as SSD staff that are supporting students and staff and families across those five schools, here you can see we have 48.75 staff members. And the .75 is actually because you can see that we have 1.5 social workers as well as an additional .25 of an occupational therapist that was added this year. So in addition to that, you can also see our number of teacher assistants. We've added four additional teacher assistant positions across the schools as well, so that 22 reflects the additional four teacher assistants that were added this year, as well as myself as a full-time special education coordinator. One thing that I also wanted to outline related to my role is that I kind of am responsible for partnering with building principals at the building level and assistant principals. And John is working more at the district level. However, we both are kind of supporting everyone across the district with the two of us. So thank you very much.

So we worked hard this year, as was mentioned, to really align the work that we do with the work that Clayton does and our approach with the way that Clayton approaches their goals and their strategic plan, which you all describe as evergreen on your website and in the brochure. I love the brochure. I kept the brochure and highlighted some things for this presentation, but I think that's really important. It hits home with special education in particular because really what we want to do is make sure that we can move in the way that our children and our families need us to move. And this kind of allows us to do that. And so as our demographics might shift a little bit based on student enrollment and their needs, our priorities shift. based on those needs. So we want to keep that as a focus, but we also want to have the foundation be those priorities as outlined in the slides before us. So with that in mind, we have goals that we set out to do that really focus in not on accessibility, which is completely different than inclusion. I think that our families in Clayton have said that being compliant is not a concern for us, and being accessible is also not a concern, but being inclusive is our priority and making sure that those things align. So tonight we'll review for sure what we've set out to do. We have many priorities and then also what we've accomplished, what we've learned from setting those goals and working towards them and accomplishing them and where we plan to go next. Okay, I was told I can talk for a long time about special education and I am excited, yeah. All right. So last year, we wanted to really get family voice and connect with them authentically. And a lot of the work that we do with families because the IEP process is so individualized happens one family at a time. We really want them to be more included with their school building teams, their classroom teachers, their principals, just the whole community rather than just us as special educators because that is their number one source of community. We do, however, want it. We wanted to get more people involved and engaged with special education in general. And one common theme within special education is executive functioning. And so we did a community book study and we had we shared with Ladue. We had one presenter. They had one presenter, one family presenter. We had Tricia Spenner and she was better than their presenter because we are Clayton, right? And so it's great. So we had, we did a book study on, um, uh, really smart, but scattered the work of Dr. Peg Dawson, who was incredible, done a lot of research, um, in this area and has a practical seven step, um, approach to increase an executive functioning skills that, that works wonders. But the book study that we did really gave parents some practical tools to to use in the home, while our teachers alongside our community went to trainings done by Peg Dawson. So we had four of our special ed teachers go through that training for coaching executive functioning skills with Peg Dawson. And again, Ladue only had three. So we had four, they had three. But the exciting part was that 350 participants and the creation of a website that kind of housed all of that knowledge for families and tools for families in one place so we can always come back to it. as a resource for our families. We also, in this area of family voice and really maintaining that connection, we focused again on transitions. So we were at all the transition nights. We are fully integrated within the Clayton community, meaning that we go to all of the open house nights We go to the parent-teacher conferences. We have teachers at the schedule walk-through days for our kids coming up from sixth grade. Our families all have the opportunity to participate in the transition night at the middle and the high school, but we have our own transition kind of session for families of students who have special needs. We did... something that I thought was kind of cool. Kindergarten on Horizon, I got an invite there that was exciting, right? So we had a special ed rep for each of the schools and there weren't a lot of questions in particular for special education, but I think our community felt like, wow, I'm seen here. I'm bringing my child, I'm included and they have resources here for us. So I thought that was really good just with that connection. We wanted to do for this coming up this school year, one of the things that we learned from last year and we want to carry on with us is that when families have a resource or we're presenting them with something that's tangible that they can use and is practical, then they really want to be engaged. And so we want to give them more opportunities to do that. As a result, we have three structured PAC ed meetings planned. We have also branding for that. I don't know if you've seen them, but they're like printed out on this really nice paper right on upstairs. Right. And then we're doing a monthly special education newsletter with resources just for our families of students who have special needs. They get a lot of newsletters from their school, from the district and other spaces, but we wanted to provide them with something that is just special for them from us. We still have our podcast link in the newsletter. Jason said that he would be down to be one of the guests because he is a special ed teacher and I'm holding him to it. We're going to continue our focus on executive functioning and giving families tools for that. And also we're going to continue to offer, of course, our family surveys. At the end of each of our IEP meetings, families have an opportunity to give us feedback. They can also click on there that they would like to talk to an administrator. I call them back. We have great conversations. And then we do a survey at the end of each semester that's particular to Clayton. Okay. So this was particularly exciting for our folks in tech and data, but we really were trying to streamline and connect our data and have a true partnership. I'm going to move around this slide a little bit, as is my style, because I think this is the most important part, but I don't think it's on there. as in the top, but the NWA and the STAR connecting our students to those tools as benchmarks and allowing for our parents to see the progress and the scores of their children regardless of their disability was huge for us. And so we used to have two different benchmark systems. Now we have the same benchmark systems that Clayton does, and that data is housed on Edge of Climber. That means that our families get the same data updates that all of the families in Clayton gets. And that's really big and huge for them, and they appreciate that. They appreciate seeing the growth that their kids make alongside their peers. We also continue to do our autism cohort, focusing on some of those alternative standards for kids that are in more replacement classes that receive special ed services. This is a great opportunity for us to gain knowledge but also for us to compare data with students who are similar and then also with the district that is similar, the do. We have scored higher than them. in several areas just went through that there and then but but really also we got to do something else that they didn't do so last time i'm going to talk about the do, but. Our teachers through this cohort got the opportunity to really pilot a like alternative standards benchmarking system for for students who take map a. We were able to participate in that pilot and LeDoux was not. So we'll have an extra year of data than they did, just want to throw that out there. But it's really good to be able to compare because Oftentimes, our students don't get compared to their peers because they don't have a lot of kids that use the same tools for benchmarking and data collection. And we have that. And I think that's great for our families. And then also there's a server that updates Clayton specific special education data every 24 hours. And we now have that connected to Clayton through power schools and edge of climber. That was exciting for Luke. You're super excited about that. So in this area, we want to continue to have our, to connect with each other. Milena has developed dashboards for us that we can include in our admin meetings with principals and use for MTSS, which we, myself or Carla will be on all tier three MTSS committees throughout the five schools. And then we also want to make sure that anytime we sit down and we have our leadership meetings with principals, that we are focusing and talking about special education student data moving forward and just throughout the year. Okay, so this is exciting. We are now going to bring it back to the podcast on Spotify because we wanted to make sure that we were available to the community. The reason why I keep bringing this up is because this is filled with resources for families. And it's in my head and in Kelly's head, Kelly's invested also, there is a chance for them to do this while they're in carpools. you know, like while they're juggling a million and one things. So we are interviewing people in particular, we did last year and we will continue to do this year that have a transition post-secondary focus because college is an option for so many of our students with special needs, regardless of their ability, they deserve that experience. And we have an opportunity to share that with our families and the community at large. Anyone is welcome to listen. Okay, all right, so we continue to use Charting the Life course K through 12. We're really excited about that. We were the first district to use that K through 12 process which really allows for our students to build on their independence and future ready skills because they have to do some presenting in Charting the Life Course. They have to talk about themselves, where they're at, where they want to go, and what we can do as their support systems to help them get there. It focuses on the student first, then the family voice, and then the staff voice. So again, building that connection and that bridge and increasing student independence. We had one student work within Clayton community and we're looking for other jobs. This is such a business heavy community. And so we're trying to really take advantage of that. Some of you are business owners and you work close by. We will be approaching you. We want our kids to have those experiences. So moving forward, we are, of course, going to expand and have more people involved in our podcast. We're going to be reaching out more to the community around us for employment opportunities and transition experiences for our students. And then we have been working hard to update our life skills curriculum program working with some of those soft skills and some of those job skills with our kids in a very purposeful way. And so to add on to that, we're developing an essential skills classroom that really simulates what kids will have to do when they live independently. And then we're also going to be doing Best Buddies so that we have more opportunities for inclusion, building that K through 12 so every kid has the opportunity to participate if they would like to. Is it 8.30? Okay, I have three more pages. Thank you. All right, so to sum it up, we have these three pillars. It's family, voice, and connection. and then student growth and independence and future readiness that connect very closely with the priorities of both the School District of Clayton and also SSD. We want to make sure that we are, I went through all these goals but I wanna say this again, we want to make sure we are not only providing our kids with access We want to provide them with true inclusion. That's what we've been called to do, and in this particular school district, we have been able to partner and make that happen, and we wanna continue to grow on that. So if you have any questions, I'm available to talk about special education all night long, but at least until 8.30.

All right. So who has a question for John or anyone at the table?

Well, I don't have a question, but I just want to thank you so much for the work that you're doing. It's so wonderful that we don't have an issue of compliance or accessibility but yet we really need to move kind of we can focus on and can move into um that the focus on inclusion so that's really cool and it sounds like you're doing so many things i'm definitely going to check out the podcast um and i just want to say that i did participate in the book club as well um i don't have any children receiving services but i got the notification and can't we all use a little executive functioning coaching so um great uh thank you so much that's all i have yeah

that's fantastic yes and we you know that we did we got 100 compliant in our desi foul review 100 very exciting

i

was waiting for you to say that i was on the

podcast

It's not published yet, but Dr. Dawson is a guest. She is a guest. This is a guest. Yep. That

book is really good for parents. Just another plug if you haven't read it and you have kids, any kids, but especially ones that need executive functioning, coaching, and support.

Erin, do you have?

I was just going to say, just following up. Basically, ditto to everything that Mead said. But also, especially the participation rate for that book study was amazing. So I'm so glad that that was so well received. And sometimes we'll have to talk about what the secret of your success was to get that many parents and families involved. And that's just really, really...

I may have been the one that said to John, please talk about this for as long as you'd like to talk about it. The reason being that I'm incredibly impressed with the work that's being done by those of you sitting at the table, as well as Chiquita Moore back there, as well as Dr. Poole, et cetera, et cetera, etc. I just can't express enough, as Nisha pointed out, how far we've come in a short time. And I'm just so incredibly... proud to have you all sitting here doing what you're doing because it's making a huge impact and you don't brag enough about yourselves. And so I'm glad that we are at this table and that we can all say to you how proud we are of what you're doing. And what I want to do actually is talk about what was in the packet that you sent us. because I read every word of it, and those addendums that you have there were extremely important. And so I just want to point out some of the incredible numbers in those addendums real quick so that we all hear and that the public gets to hear these incredible numbers. Under the category of staffing, the parent-facing engagement survey that you all did, which is incredible that they're doing all these surveys and getting all this incredible feedback, et cetera, For supportive relationships, it went up from 80% saying they felt that there was supportive relationship to 91%. Ninety-one percent of our families feel like their students have supportive, the staff feels like they have supportive relationships. That's an incredible number. In the family engagement, it went up from 73 percent to 89 percent. Again I mean that's an incredible number. This is your what you're doing is is really paying off in the educating all students which is a huge deal for families and staff to say that they feel like all students are feeling like they're being educated. It went up from 67% in June of 25 to 82%. I mean, this is in one year, guys. This is, you know, I just, and not just how far it's going up in one year, but where they are. I mean, 91%, that just blows my mind. So I just couldn't help but say that I'm extremely impressed by that. With the post-graduation outcomes, which is something that you just talked about, John, and that is incredibly important. for every single one of our students, including our SSD students. And for the class of 24, there were 23 kids. Two of them went to four-year institutions. One of them went to two-year. But in the class of 25, there were 22 kids total. Twelve went to four- year. Twelve. Up from two to twelve. Two-year, there were four. And then there was also one that went into the military, five that had employment. So we are really making sure that our students are well-prepared for whatever it is next that is going to serve them and allow them to be the person that they have taken the time to discover about themselves and that are going to go out into the world and do amazing things. So just keep up the good work because it's just – You're making a huge difference in our students' lives. So I appreciate you, and you're allowed to come back and talk about it anytime. Thank you so much. Thank

you. Yeah, I guess I'll just add, you know, you think about how far this partnership has come in just three years is just incredible. This doesn't really happen in any sort of public institution, and so the speed at which you guys are moving is just incredible and exciting, you know, is the word that I'm sitting here listening to you guys. Like, this really is... I don't know if it is the model for how these partnerships for work, but it's got to be nominated for it right and so You know I was listening to something last night and someone said truth belongs in plain sight And I think you know this exact is exactly the truth that you know needs to be shared And so I just want to thank you guys for coming and sharing that.

Thank you so much.

Yeah Thank you All right, action items. Pam, can I get a motion about the tax rates?

I have a motion to approve the 2026 property tax rates as follows. This is long. $3.5039 per $100 of assessed valuation for residential real estate, which includes a .5110 debt service levy, $4.4178 for $100 of assessed evaluation for commercial real estate, which include a .5110 of debt service levy and a $4.4447 per $100 assessed value for personal property, which includes a 0.5110 Service levy

Second I wasn't sure you said it was long as I was plenty of space

any Comments or comments for

I was just gonna get mad to come up here and explain the two rollbacks one more time For the people in the back Just in case anyone skips to this part of the meeting

Twice

Thank you so we do have to roll backs, we have one on residential that's approximately 16 cents which is what we have historically rolled back our residential tax rate since we have adopted the new voter approved rate. The second is approximately 7 cents of rollback that we're asking to adopt in order to keep the residential rates consistent with the previous year.

So that's the Proposition E rollback that we've had since that passed and a new rollback that's being approved by this board.

OK. The seven cent rollback would be a one year. So as reassessment occurs next year we would see that expire. Thank you for explaining

that. Any other questions or comments. All right. And all those in favor. Any opposed? Great, it passes. Next up, Matt, don't go anywhere. We have the resolution for the GEO bonds.

I move to approve the resolution declaring the intent of the School District of Clayton to issue approximately $95 million in general obligation bonds and authorizing the district's underwriter, bond council, and appropriate district representatives to proceed with the bond issuance process. Second.

All right, any questions or comments for this one? All right,

go for it. Matt, did you want to introduce who's in the audience? I was

going to say, he showed up. You got to at least make him earn his keep here. So

we're very happy to host Eric Creech and Aubrey Mankulich-Gator with Gilmore and Bell. They're both representing the school district as bond counsel. We work very closely with Eric and his team to make sure that we're following all of our compliance and spending dollars in an appropriate manner whenever those dollars are received. We've been regularly having phone calls over the last two or three weeks to make sure that all the I's and T's are dotted.

Thank you and welcome. All right, with that being said, all those in favor? Any opposed? All right, that passes. Next action item for the CRSWC budget

I move to approve the Clayton Recreation Sports and Wellness Commission budget for the fiscal year 27 as presented. Second.

Any questions or comments here? Go for

it. So one of the things that I've been, you know, we had the CRSWC meeting some number of weeks ago. And one of the things I've been pondering is at what point do we as a board slash district say this is the total percent of our expenditures, of our annual expenditures that we want to give or whatever, fund to support CRSWC and whether that is a percent of our expenditures or a total dollar amount. I think from that meeting we are all in agreement that this is an important endeavor. And as costs go up and revenue doesn't, I think it's worth us having a conversation about that.

I mean,

Leo? We'll talk offline. I mean, there is a strategic retreat coming up for that group, and if we have input like that to give as a board or if we want to consider doing that, yeah, we should absolutely talk about that.

I do think it's a, I agree with everything you just said. It is a great community asset. It is something we are committed to and there should be some conversation around know what what is the financial cost at least this board is willing to to bear to continue it and it's really more of a and i think i said something along these lines a couple weeks ago like in the future if you look out into the future there are some cliffs and like far out in the future right but there are some cliffs so it's worth having the conversation now so that you don't have hit the cliff after probably most of us are not even on the board anymore and you're you know you left someone else with the bag I guess we want to vote to approve this year's budget. So let's go ahead and do that. So all those in favor Any opposed? Great, thank you Consent agenda

I Move to approve consent agenda items eleven point two through eleven ten

All those in favor any opposed aye Great. Consent agenda passes. We are now to board communication. So Let's see who might have a report. Erin, do you have an equity committee report by chance?

I do have an equity committee. Great. So the first equity committee meeting of the academic year was held on September 9th. And we welcomed Brittany Willis as a PE teacher at Captain and she's the new equity coordinator for the district joining the team. We also, well, But Carla is also joining the Equity Committee, so it was great to have her there and additional representative from the Family Center as well. So we got some updates on a strategic plan, particularly around goal one measures from Dr. Poole, talked about the SEL curriculum and equity connection and some more opportunities to build some more adult capacity around the SEL curriculum as well. One exciting thing that came out of the survey last year of Clayton teachers and staff was looking at different opportunities for affinity spaces, and there will be a new affinity space for board grant parents. So Clayton employees who live outside of the district but have students in the district, there was a really high interest in that opportunity. And also the board grants students make up about 10% of the current students. Clayton student population. So that is not an insubstantial, you know, not a small number. So that is exciting work that's coming forward. And then we heard about some great Clayton Cares community events that are coming up for this year. And we talked a little bit about coming up in the next meeting, we'll be looking at some more student data and talking about some of the MTSS equity walkthroughs and how those are taking shape this year.

That's great. Thank you. You're welcome. Ben, do you have a Parks and Rec

update? I was not able to attend the last Parks and Rec. Okay. But we

still have Parks and Rec? We still have Parks and Re. Yes, we do. Thank you. All right.

Correct.

All right. Then we'll keep going. Chris.

Which one

do you

want? Both. Okay, I'm going to let Aaron cover. So Aaron and I are both on the wellness committee, and so Aaron is going to do that tonight, and I will go with SSD after her.

Whoops. All right. So we got a lot of updates from the Health and Wellness Committee meeting. It was actually really, well, I think, Chris, you can correct me if this is wrong, but I think this is the first meeting that we had student representatives

at that. Historically, this committee had students, and then COVID happened, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that came out of our triennial assessment last year year was that we would very much appreciate having students back. And they were there and they were shining. It was great. Yes, they

made some great contributions across different aspects of the meeting. So there were updates provided from the health and PE side around how they're integrating elements of the Tier 1 SEL curriculum into elementary PE and health and wellness. There was an update from the medical side from our nurse coordinator around CPR training that the fifth graders are engaging in and the hearing and vision tests that have been going on. There was an SEL update from Dr. Fisher who talked about some of the rollout for the Tier 1, and then we got some feedback along the way with the Wellness Week and Wellness Center from the Clayton High School representatives. There was also discussion around nutrition from our Chartwell. Yeah, okay, yeah, I was like, I don't want to just misname someone. partner around working with local farms to incorporate more fresh food and having less cooked and frozen options that are presented to our students across the district. So that has been a little bit of an adjustment, you know, in some staffing and training and whatnot, but seems to be going well. And there was an interesting discussion, it was also another opportunity that was great for the students to weigh in around the under-utilization of breakfast in the buildings and what some of the structural and social barriers might be around trying to make sure the kids who need some more nutritional support in the morning are getting what they need. So there was also talk around, we had representatives from the Center of Clayton there too talking about the physical well-being and usage of that space, so tying back into some of our other discussions. And last but not least, staff wellness was also certainly a part of that discussion as well. covered a lot of ground in not a lot of time, probably almost just a little bit longer than what I just spent here trying to recap it. But it was a great meeting. It was my first time on that committee. So

looking forward to more. Thank you. That was great. And I think at the conclusion of the meeting, what we did was... We had looked at all the different goals for this coming year that the recommendations I should say from the triennial assessment we had them all Mike had them all posted around the room and we all went around as a committee and Sort of said which one would have the most impact for us to sort of be the first or second one for us to really tackle and There are 10. We've already accomplished one, which was making sure we had student voice at the table. They were there. So we only have nine now. But we're going to be, as a committee, figuring out which one of those we want to tackle first, second, et cetera. And we'll have more news on that next time. Yeah.

that remind me a little bit of, um, some data that's come in around 30 use of a three day use of vaping and tobacco use and, and, um, data from white on and, um, CHS. So, you know, that would be good for us to understand kind of where, what's the lay of the land. Um, and, um. There, there will be more to come there.

Okay. So we had, um, An SSD, our first SSD governing council meeting. I want to first thank Meade for joining. We, it was the first time we had our alternate there with us and that was wonderful. Um, so appreciate you being there. Um, it was via zoom, um, and the rest of the meetings will be in person, but our first one was via zoom. And at this first meeting, one of the important things that was covered is just kind of an onboarding, um, for any new members such as Meade. who have never sat on the governing council before. They go through and they talk about CSIP, et cetera, et cetera, and make sure that new members have a feel for what the governing council does, what the relationship is with the Board of Education, what our main roles are, et cetera. So we did that. We also had a very brief, just a preliminary discussion about the annual budget, just something brief, you know, just to sort of give us a little bit of information before we end up talking about it in greater depth later. And then the biggest thing is that we finally had a conclusion to the Board of Education elections. We Attempted to elect someone for Sub-District 2 in March. That did not happen. There was an impasse. We then attempted again in June. Again, an impasse. But on Monday night, we were able to elect someone from Bob McKendrick is his name, and he is going to represent Sub-Distric 2. He will be the newest member of the SSD Board of Education. He will be new to the role. There was an incumbent, and Bob was the one that was ultimately elected. And I think that's about it. I do want to just mention, so that was it for the actual meeting, unless you feel like there's something you'd like to add.

No, but I think you're selling yourself short a little. Weren't you instrumental on that orientation part? I think it was happening before I

got there,

too. Well, it was very helpful as a new member of the governing council to really understand the role between the governing council and the SSD board. And, you know, it gave me a little bit of a clearer picture on the whole operation. Yeah. So thank you.

So I was on the bylaws committee subcommittee and we did talk about how incredibly important that the onboarding is for new members so that they really truly understand the gravity of their role in their vote et cetera et cetera. We were not able to adopt our bylaws yet. We are having our legal you know SSD legal look at those to make sure that we are following statute but that will come up at a subsequent meeting. So that's exciting. But what I will say so thank you for adding that that's very kind But I will say that then this meeting concluded and then it was the next morning that all of us at this table as well as the public heard that SSD will be going through a state audit So that will start as soon as possible and it will take months before there is a conclusion to that but that is taking place and and i will need and i will give as much information as we can as we have it but i don't know that we'll have much until the conclusion um but that is the current state

thank

you

thank you and then uh mead uh and ben technology

um yes and cef but if you want technology first i'll do technology

save the best for last

Yes, so we had a technology meeting on the 16th. It was the first of the year. And it started with an update from Luke about kind of what's happened so far this year with the iPad deployment, a little bit of a preview that there will be. The parent survey will go out in November. They've been working on the AI guidance. So Manu, that was an interesting point that you made about AI. And I think that the team is working on that. But it's really great to hear kind of student voice around that. So thanks for sharing that. And the upcoming, oh, we got a little sneak preview of the new website that will, I don't think it's live yet, but it will be going live soon, I believe. About technology and sort of the district's approach to technology. Let's see. There was like a little activity where the tables sorted these little cards that described a use of technology into categories of purposeful learning or purposeful use of technology and maybe not so purposeful use of tech. That was interesting. Um, and yeah, and then I joined the AI group. Um, and like I said, they're sort of finalizing a graphic that might live in the, um, classrooms for students to reference and for teachers to use as sort of a guideline about when activities might be sort of activities that students could use AI or what parameters there might be for AI used by the students. But notably, I you know, I'm not quite sure I might have joined late. So this might be I need to follow up with Luke, but I'm not quite Sure what the guidance around AI for the teachers will be so Don't ask me that. So yeah, and then it was kind of, again, back in the instructional practices sort of subgroup, there was talk about how to keep kind of the conversation going with the individual buildings. So this group is staff from all the buildings. And Angie was there, and she sort of you know was asking everyone to go back to their buildings and encourage the conversation to keep going so um that was good and i think that's it for the technology meeting for now

and what is the cef update

well thank you for asking so cf the cef meeting started this time um i was running late because I was at a PTO meeting at the Family Center, but started at CHS because Dan has this vision for a Hall of Fame for alumni of CHS. and like a digital kind of interactive thing. So they've got the class picture things. I don't know if those are going or moving, but I think the idea was to have kind of a whole space there that would be dedicated to alumni and could change, be dynamic. So that was cool. There was a lot of excitement around that. So that might be something that CEF contributes to. there was discussion of kind of, again, how to increase awareness of CEF in the community. They placed an ad in the art fair booklet. I don't know if you saw that. They are hiring a admin. Maybe that's not the right word, but someone to help administratively with CEF a full a role a paid role so that's great they're working on that and then a little bit update about their finances they're working on getting their form 990s updated brand and communications they're adjusting the logo There was some discussion of that. And then lastly, a lot of talk around homecoming. So they're putting forth a lot of energy around the homecoming activities. The barbecue notably is, as you all know, it's for the whole community, not just alumni. So there was a lot of encouragement to attend and to spread the word, staff, families. you know, any students, whatever. So everybody come to that. And also discussion around the community 5K. So they're partnering with, as Celeste said, they're partnering with Clayton Community on that and just also hoping for a good turnout on that. And so they're really just kind of putting a lot of energy towards increasing their visibility in the community. I would say that and streamlining their finances, getting a handle on kind of where everything's going and what they have and how to best direct the funds so that they, again, align with the district's strategic plan is kind of where they're headed. So that's that.

Great. Thank you. Anything I missed? All right. Well then thank you guys. I would let John talk all the way to 830, but she's gone. So with that in mind,