April 15, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

No? You start it. Since there's no board. .

All right, we're going to go ahead and get started. Adequate notice has been given. Let's all rise for the pledge. I move that we approve the agenda as posted.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?

No. Opposed? All right, the agenda is adopted as posted. All right, there was an election last week and we're going to hear now from Chris Wynn, I guess, on the election results.

We are here to announce the election results for the School District of Clayton. The Board of Directors election results are Jason Groh with 1,791 votes, Aaron Linenbringer with 1,760 votes, and Meade Greenberg with 1,628 votes. The results remain unofficial until the certification by the Board of Elections office is completed, which will be within the next week. Tonight, the three of them will take the oath of office.

So I guess, do I have to move that we adjourn? Yes. Okay. Okay, so can I get a motion that we adjourn the board, send I?

Second. So moved. Yeah, okay. Exactly.

I said, can I get a motion? That's what I meant. Okay, great. And then I seconded it.

So moved, second. Okay. Yes. Thank you I Jason Brode do solemnly affirm that I am at least 24 years of age But I am a citizen of the United States.

But I am a citizen of the United States. And a resident taxpayer of the school district of Clayton, St. Louis County. And that I will support the constitutions of the United States.

And that I will support the constitution of the United States and the state of Missouri. And that I will abide by and uphold the school district of Clayton's board of notices and voter benefits. And that I will abide by and uphold the School District of Clayton Board Member Code of Ethics. Faithfully conduct myself in office.

Faithfully conduct myself in office. Thank you. Let's take a picture with the family. Sasha, come on.

Sasha! Get the bullseye. Hi. All right.

Let's have Aaron come up next. Aaron, will you take the oath of office? I, Aaron Lindenbringer, solemnly affirm that I am at least 24 years of age, that I am a citizen of the United States, and a resident taxpayer of the school district of Clayton, and a resident taxpayer of the school district of Clayton, and a resident taxpayer of the state of Missouri, that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the state of Missouri, And then I will support the Constitution. Thank you.

And Mrs. Greenberg, come on down. Spervantage, Proprietary, and Proprietary. Thank you Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome officially, Aaron and Mead, to the best Board of Education that you will ever get to be a part of. So truly, welcome, and we're very excited. And also, welcome, Jason. Thank you.

Welcome. So at this point, we are going to move forward with the first election for this evening, which will be the Office of Board President. And at this time, I would like to open up nominations for board president. I would like to nominate Jason Groh.

Wonderful. Jason Groh has now been nominated for board of education president. Jason Groh, do you accept the nomination? Please do.

Yes. Go ahead and, Pam, would you like to share some thoughts about nominating Jason Groh? I would. Thank you for asking.

So this is now a tradition of mine when I make a nomination. I have a poem here. I rise today to proudly say I nominate Jason Groh without delay. For president of the board, I stand with full support and confidence at hand.

Jason leads with heart and care, with steady purpose, calm and fair. Founding Live Well Partners, he works each day to bring compassion in a meaningful way. That same respect he'll bring right here to guide our district year by year. He'll build upon the path we've seen, thoughtful, collaborative, and disciplined.

With Stacy Seawalk's steady hand, this board has grown both strong and planned. A team that's thoughtful, focused, wise. Jason will build on that and rise. With Prop O passed by voters' voice, a clear and confident community choice, Jason's ready now to help ensure our path is steady, strong, and secure, with careful planning, thoughtful view, and fiscal discipline guiding us through.

He started at Indiana, where he began, studying poli-sci as a young man, then on to Wash U to further pursue an MBA in finance with a strategic view. With years of experience, insight deep, and promises he continues to keep, as treasurer and vice president before, he understands this board to its core. Now, our most senior member, wise and true, with a vision for what we still can do. And yes, he'll lead with humor, too, a trait we know we'll all value.

With the support of Sasha, Lana, and Becca, he steps into this role with purpose ever clearer. He'll serve this board and give his all, the leader we trust when duty calls. Wow, thank you so much for sharing that poem. That was wonderful.

There's a standard to us. Seriously. So Jason Groh, do you accept the nomination for board president? How could I not after that?

So yes, I gratefully accept the nomination. Is there anything you would like to say? There is a little bit. So first of all, thank you, Pam, for that incredible nomination.

I do love that your poems are becoming part of a tradition and perhaps part of a couple of traditions that are emerging here among the board. I also want to extend my first formal welcome to our newest board members Aaron and Mead You both come with fresh ideas and perspectives and we all excited to be working with you guys This group is being sort of reconstituted reformed here tonight after the heels of passing a successful PROPO The near 90 yes vote validates the work of this district leadership including the Board of Education over the past couple of years And securing million in debt financing to pursue our long facilities plan is an awesome responsibility and I know none of us take that lightly So given our success as a board in this over the past couple of years, I see no reason not to double down on what's made us successful. You like that? Double down?

Thank you. Superroportionate, Proprietary, and Proprietary. Sure. You know, one of our board goals for this year was to elevate our own leadership capacity as a board.

We made strong strides on that this year with the work that we did with MSBA in the fall. And I want us to be able to build on that and establish more institutional memory among this group. So things including formalizing all the informal processes that that we have as a board that we do really well and just making sure that sort of gets codified. Spervantage, and having sort of been willing to, as a group and as individuals, sort of accept challenges outside of what we view as our own personal realm of expertise or skill set or whatever that might be, so that we can gain more exposure to more parts of the district more quickly.

I think you'll find me to be someone who is happy to share the work, and I hope to be thoughtful in divvying out how that work gets shared around so that we get more exposure to those things. Most of all, I just sort of want to say how proud I am to be a part of this team. This is the best board you'll ever be a part of, both definitionally and it happens to also be true that it's a great board. So I want to say that part too, and I just really enjoy the work together and look forward to the next year.

And if you guys will have me, I would be honored and humbled to be your president. Thank you, Jason. Thank you for accepting the nomination. Are there any other nominations for board president?

Hearing none, we will move forward with the election. All in favor of Jason Groh as the School District of Clayton's Board President. Aye. Any opposed?

Congratulations Jason Groh, you are now the Board President. Oh, and I now gladly hand over the board meeting to you. All right, here we go. That's right.

The next election this evening will be for the office of vice president of the board. Nominations are now open for vice president. Are there any nominations? Then I will nominate Chris Huynh gladly.

I will, I apologize that I will not live up to what Pam just did. But let me just say this. I, Chris and I came in, actually, she is technically by two weeks, the more senior board member, because I had COVID when we both got, when we were supposed to both get sworn in. Chris and I did not know each other four years ago.

I have very much enjoyed getting to know Chris and working with Chris. And I'll just say this. This district does not have a better advocate for kids in any stakeholder group across the entire district than Chris Wynn. From her work advocating on, you know, with all the stuff with SSD and curriculum issues and social emotional learning issues.

I mean, Chris, you know, really is an important voice at the table for us. And just thinking about, you know, there is a president-vice president relationship that is critical. And I'm excited to have Chris as my partner's vice president for the next year. And, you know, that advocacy that Chris brings to the table, you know, we need to hear that voice.

And I'm excited to have this in an elevated role. So I hope you accept the nomination, Chris, because I very much look forward to our work together. I got to keep going. All right.

Are there any, oh, Chris, do you accept the nomination? Thank you. Yes, I gratefully accept the nomination. Great.

Okay. Are there any other nominations? All right. Well, then hearing no for the nominations, nominations are closed.

We will now proceed to the election. All those in favor of Chris So now we have a question from the audience. So, we have two questions. One is, what is your role in the role of a twin as vice president?

Say hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed?

Congratulations, Chris. We will now move on to secretary. Nominations are now open for secretary. Does anyone have a nomination for secretary?

I nominate Pam Liss Lerman. Okay. I'll say Pam and I ran an election two years ago together and we've been on the board two years. I think Pam has as good or better sense of what this community wants out of education and school district as anyone I've ever met.

And I think she is wonderful to serve as our I also understand that the secretary has some responsibility for policies, and I know Pam will have some input on the policies of the district going forward. Great. Pam, do you accept the nomination? What's that?

It's a loaded statement. It's loaded. I do accept. Thank you, Leo.

I also want to say I realized that I need to give a citation to that wonderful poem. I put all that information into ChatGPT and had a conversation with ChatGPT. I meant to say that when I first did it, but I got nervous and I forgot. So I'm just putting it out there.

Children, see how we always cite our sources. For all the children watching at home. All the children watching at home. Great.

Are there any other nominations? Okay. Hearing no further nominations, nominations are now closed, so we will now proceed to the election. The candidates for secretary are Pam Bliss Lerman.

All in favor of Pam Bliss Lerman as secretary, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations to Dr.

Pam. And last but certainly not least, we will now move to the election for office of the treasurer of the board. Nominations are now open for board treasurer. I would like to nominate Leo Heumann.

Okay. Great. And let me say a few words about you. So this is my first nomination, so okay, I might do things a little different.

So I now rise and have the honor to nominate our friend and fellow director, Leo Heumann, for the role of Board Treasurer. This is my first nomination, so I appreciate being entrusted with this responsibility. Feeling the weight of history on my shoulders, I ask myself, how well do I truly know our nominee, and is he the right fit for the position? Lord knows what could go awry if you picked the wrong person to be Treasurer.

I mean, right? I thought back to the first time I met Leo, which was 2024 during the campaign, where I might remind everyone that I was squarely in this camp right here as Pam's treasurer. He came to the door and realized, this is Leo Heumann? I was ill-prepared to meet our possible nemesis because we instantly hit it off, or at least that's how I remember it going down.

I might have invited you in for a drink had you not said something like, I would like to keep talking, but I have to ring another 100 doorbells before dark, and I totally respected that. But back to my research. So first, cursory check came back, as expected, pretty solid. His board history and then, I don't know, some number of years on the district's finance committee before that, like eight, something like that?

Okay okay wow Tremendous family highly knowledgeable experience with the law and how it applies to public education tremendous reputation widely liked admired Okay all right table stakes right okay But a person pedigree is everything Is this guy made of all the kind of stuff we looking for Might he skip town should things get really tough Turns out the humans have actually been in Clayton since the late 19th century Great-grandfather and alderman, grandfather mayor, father alderman. Of course, human hardware was a fixture of downtown Clayton for a long time. So it turns out the humans are not only bookish, they're also handy as well. But here's where it gets a little saucy.

The human lineage had been focused on city politics, and Leo flouting his patrimony by joining the school board, as his mother's family tradition had been. How about those apples? No, that was later. He's not at...

My notes are everywhere. Okay. But he's not a Clayton native. People, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold the phone.

He's not a native. Okay. He was born in Maine. And he lived in Chesterfield until he became old enough to use the schools in Clayton.

Okay. We've all been there. And just to do my due diligence, I did verify that Leo had indeed attended 14 years in the district. But wait, if you do the math, K-12 is only 13 years.

Hmm. Was he held back, people, you think? Well, turns out, somehow, some way, there was two years of kindergarten for this gentleman over here. Due to his summer birthday.

Okay, anyways, this has not been totally validated or verified, but I would advise you not to answer anything at this time. So in closing, we're all just damn glad to have you on this board. And so keep doing what you're doing. We have a lot of faith in you and appreciate your willingness to serve as our treasurer.

Mr. Heumann, do you accept the nomination? I guess. I'll say serving in the role of treasurer after this community placed a tremendous amount of trust in this board to manage the Prop O resources and get the results that we said to the community we were going to get is a real honor and responsibility.

Thank you. Any other nominations? All right, then we will proceed to the election. All those in favor of Leo Heumann as board treasurer, say hi.

Any opposed? Great. Congratulations, Leo. Thank you.

Thank you for your opportunity to talk, Mr. President, members of the board, and Madam Superintendent. Congratulations on your elections and reelections and on the overwhelming support from the community for your proposition. It's nothing short of inspiring and frankly awesome to see the community so in tune with the schools and to really recognize their importance.

My name is Nathan Milombardo, as you correctly pronounce. Please just call me Nathan. The last time I usually leave off everything. I'm running to be your next state rep here in District 99.

Your current rep is Ian Mackey. He's turned out. He is supporting my I'm going to take a few minutes to thank the people who have supported my campaign and has endorsed me. I can only hope that my election goes as smoothly as ours did this evening, and I will be accepting poems as in-kind contributions.

So feel free to do that. I will not give the big bio and spiel tonight because I know that's a little tedious. I grew up in Ferguson I live in Clayton I currently work for the city of Ferguson doing urban planning and economic development I was previously the city manager of Berkeley where I worked a lot with the Ferguson Florissant School District so I very in tune to the importance of good intergovernmental relationships and the importance of funding and good functioning of boards such as this one You know, the reason I got into this race, you know, I spent a vast majority, or I don't know about a vast majority, but a huge majority of my life in school. And to see what we've done in this state in terms of chipping away at funding, you know, regulations here, you know, we're already at the bottom in this country.

Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Okay. Great.

So just an update to the community, really on behalf of the board, and this has already been talked about a few times, but I think we're all just humbled, really, at the community support that we saw last week for Prop O. The community's vote of confidence means a great deal to us and to our schools. And with the 90% approval rate that we talked about a little bit earlier, this Barmer Crest really was a historic victory. Some of us went back and looked and it's hard to find in St.

Louis County a bond issue that passed with this level of support. And that level really allows us to take meaningful steps to address some of the most critical facility challenges facing our district. We're excited to get to work and move these projects towards completion. And as we shared throughout the process leading up to the vote last week, we know there are lots of needs across our schools and athletic facilities that require investment.

Prop O gives us the opportunity to begin tackling the most urgent priorities first. So please know that we have not forgotten about the other needs that still exist. We're grateful to everyone who came together to support this effort and help make these improvements possible. We look forward to keeping the community informed along the way.

That's really a commitment that all of us sitting here at this table have, sharing updates on a regular basis on the progress of our work and continuing the conversation about future phases to address the additional needs identified through our long-range facilities master plan. So thank you again to the community and now it's time to get to work. Okay, next on the agenda we have, oh, I just want to say bye to my family. See you later.

Thanks for coming. Next on the agenda, we have policy BBFA, board member conflict of interest for, I guess, re-approval. So, John, are you going to? Good evening.

The policy before you tonight is one that we adopt regularly. It's required by law to be adopted every other year. We've made it a tradition here to adopt it every year on the evening that we install new board members. There's no change in the policy from the past.

It's just a re-adoption. Okay. Any comments? All right.

Then can I get a motion? Since this is my first time, do I just say? I move to approve the readoption of policy BBFA. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great.

Thank you, John. Next action item up, 2627, substitute pay increase. Kelly, welcome. Congratulations, everyone.

Last Titan we increased the rates for the substitute teachers was in 2023. As you guys all know, we generally increase compensation for all of the other employee groups on an annual basis. We're currently ranked 13 out of the 23 Ed Plus districts. And if you include the charter schools, like, there's 26 districts, and I think we're 15th in that ranking.

So it really important that we have good substitute teacher pay so that substitutes want to get a good grade And we also looking at the number of students that are going to be in the class Thank you All those opposed? Great, it passes. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you.

Next we have the Consent Agenda. So can I get a motion to approve that? I move to approve Consent Agenda items 7.2 to 7.3. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great.

All right. That was easy. We'll move on to board communications now. I think, Pam, was there a Clayton Education Foundation meeting?

I'm guessing there was since our last meeting, since you're asking me. Yes, it was on March 24th. Fourth, so at the Clayton Education Foundation meeting, they voted to approve teacher grants for multiple teachers and groups that had applied for these teacher grants to the Clayton Education Foundation. Some of these include Catalyst, Innovations for Gifted Learners at the Elementary Level, a program called Calm at School and Confident at Home is also for the elementary schoolers.

And, yes, so that was that. They also spoke about, oh, they also decided to start collaborating with the Strawberry Fest, which is an annual Glenridge tradition, to help support the Clayton Education Foundation. And, Chris, was there a Social, Emotional, and Wellness Committee meeting? Yes, just this week we had that, our last one of the year.

I think I mentioned that at the very beginning of the year, but by the end of the year, that our social-emotional SEL and wellness committee would have completed a triennial assessment, and I will happily report that we have. Spervantage, and in order to complete that, we had a number of stakeholders that, you know, the committee is made up of a number of stakeholders, right? So we have people from nutrition, people, our PE folks, our health folks, we have parents, just a number of amazing, you know, folks in the district that work, you know, on wellness on a daily basis, all came together. We looked at the assessment, answered all the questions.

It's something we're going to do every three years. This is what we, you know, should do according to the state. I think that makes a lot of sense. So we've got ours done.

It'll be public soon. From that assessment, we have some recommendations that we have for, you know, some things going forward. But yeah, I'm just really proud of the group that came together and looked at everything in such a, you know, thorough way. And I'm especially proud of the amount of work we're already doing.

And we got to say already doing that on that day. Category already doing that, right? There were several that we said, you know, mostly doing and then the ones that we are, we had to say not really doing those are the ones that we're going to be making sure we address this coming year. So I'm excited for this committee to continue.

Now that this assessment has been made, we really have a direction for what we're doing well and what we need to where we need to grow, etc. So it's, it's great work. And I'm, it's my it's my cup of tea. So I'm very excited about it for our district.

That's great. Thank you. I think that's it unless anyone else had anything. Oh, go for it.

Equity. On March 25th, we had an equity committee meeting. So Dr. Cameron Poole has been leading the equity committee, which is a committee of teachers and staff across the district who come together.

And the main focus in the last couple months has been to figure out whether and how to create affinity groups for staff. We do these well, or at least fairly well, I would say well, at the middle school and the high school for students. And so Dr. Poole is trying to see if our staff, if it would be useful.

And so at this most recent meeting, we continue to revise a survey that the committee together has created led by Dr. Poole to gauge the interest in which affinity groups would be wanted and needed. That's great. All right, anything else?

Going once, going twice. All right, then can I get a motion to adjourn? Aye. All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Great. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.