February 5, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Coming from another meeting. Adequate notice has been given.

I'd like everyone to stand and join us in saying the pledge, please. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for For which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, Chris, will you read the motion to approve the agenda, please? I move that we approve the agenda as posted.

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

Okay, motion passes. Okay, Dr. Murdoch, we are going to move to recognizing our own. Testing.

There we go. Good evening, everyone. All right. So I am here to recognize Glenridge's own Corey Kent.

He is our custodial supervisor. He exemplifies the spirit of It Takes a Village. He embodies the essence of a true Fred, as described in one of my favorite books, The Fred Factor. So if you haven't read that book, it's a great book.

Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be extraordinary and that Mr Kent Corey goes above and beyond his duties ensuring our building is spotless and supporting staff with countless handyman tasks daily He ensures that our building is clean He helps individuals load and unload their vehicles He has helped me hang up more signs than I can count, all with a smile. He never seems to stress when he's getting calls to clean up all types of messes across the building. He has a smile and he's going from one mess to the next. He always shows school spirit by participating in school spirit days and Halloween, even if it's not his favorite.

He still does it. More than that, he steps into the role of a big brother for our students, offering guidance, conversation, and activities to help them process emotions and find stability. His involvement in the African American Male Affinity Group has been very pivotal in our building. He has profoundly impacted our whole entire Glen Ridge community.

Teachers, staff, and students are better because of his extraordinary care and dedication to our school community. Come up, Mr. Kent. And then we have some staff members that are here to support Mr.

Kent, so I would love for them to come up too. And a colleague. Yes, come up. And we're recognizing another one of our own from Steve Hudson, please.

Thank you. Tonight I'm here to recognize our head girls soccer coach who also is our head boys soccer coach. That is Brendan Taylor. He's right in front of some of his players.

Why? This is uncomfortable. Sorry. Why?

The obvious answer might be the fact he's one of nine coaches in the history of high school soccer in Missouri to win both a girls state championship Superroportion, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Coach Taylor with the 1986 trophy. So that was a special moment for him and his father. These are obvious reasons why I advocated to recognize Coach Taylor at this table.

Superroportion O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Myself, Dr. Patel, Dr. Kaczewski, and many others in this room got to witness this excellence when we went out to Lindenwood to watch the state semifinal boys game and the state championship.

The way they organized the seating, we as spectators or administrators had to sit directly behind the bench to monitor our students. And it was absolutely incredible to watch Coach Taylor and his assistants I going to go ahead and start the recording Boom there it is If you ever need me for technology please call So this is just evidence of that Here is a picture from a pickup soccer game that many of the alumni soccer players came back to play with their former head coach. I'll end with this. I was at a long-term facilities planning meeting in this room, seated probably right here.

And at my table was one of the starting soccer players, defensive back for that state championship team. It was a few days before the semifinal final games. And I said, how are you feeling about the games? And without pausing, he said, we cannot be better prepared.

So I probably checked out of that meeting for 20 minutes in all because could he have made a better statement? Let me reference back to my notes. I don't want to mess this up. It was clear that one of the brightest young men that Clayton High School had to offer knew that preparation equaled success.

And we got to witness that cold, windy evening at Lindenwood University, what preparation looks like, because the boys, some of them seated back there, absolutely dominated. Dominated. So, Coach Taylor, from the bottom of my heart, I value you as a friend. I value you as a coach.

But more importantly, everyone in this room values you for what you do for the students at CHS. So, thank you. Hey, Coach, I think you're a pretty good teacher, too. Maybe we can get you on another team over here one day.

Yes, please. Thank you all. Congratulations again to both Corey and Brendan. We're so proud and happy we could recognize you here tonight.

No pressure if anyone wants to leave the meeting now, though, too. Anyone that came for Corey or Brendan, you don't need to stay. Congratulations. We are moving on to...

The best is yet to come. Yeah, well, that is true. Public participation. We do have one public comment tonight from Laritha Marie Kane.

Jeff will get you set up on the microphone. Hi, everyone. My name is Laritha Kane. First, I would like to say thank you for having me this evening.

I wanted to share something very quickly. It's going to be very short. My grandfather was very fond of this district. His name was Donald Larry Young.

Fortunately, he passed away and I would like to continue what he started. And so more to come. But thank you guys so much for welcoming my grandfather while he was here. He was very fond of Clayton School District.

So I would like to thank you guys on his behalf. And I hope you guys have an amazing school year. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Thank you. Okay, we will move on now to 4.1, Superintendent Communications from Dr. Patel. Okay, continuing with the celebrations, I want to do, first start off by sharing an amazing experience I had last week.

So last week, Dr. Kaczewski and I got to attend the Missouri Music Educators Conference at Osage Beach. And every year I get invited to it and every year something comes up so I'm not able to attend. But I made it a point this year to really be there.

And Jeff, if you don't mind getting to that picture for me. The students were remarkable. I don't know if I have the exact words how to express what I felt when they were performing. They were one of three high schools in the state that got selected.

...selected to perform, and apparently for the past four years, you're eligible every three years to go and perform, and for the past 12 years, our high school's always at the conference and is selected to do that. And I really have no words for how amazing they were. In fact, at the end of their performance, there was a photographer there who had been there all week listening to all the different performances, Superroportion O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you all for being there and supporting our students as well.

So I think you would agree that it was remarkable. Absolutely. It was one of my favorite pieces because it was an attaché for spring. Yes, and I learned that.

So I was like, great. But they were remarkable. So I just wanted to make sure we recognized them. And then at the middle school, again, student highlights, I want to keep giving some shout outs.

We had our eighth grade exploratorium team that went to Rolla, Missouri to participate in a future cities competition. There's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to get our students prepared for that, and they came in second place. So that was great for them and a great learning experience for them. And then our student, Kaylin, who's an eighth grader at Y-Down right now, won the Healthy Living Poster competition that's put together by the St.

Louis County Department of Public Health. There were over 700 entries, and she was the winner. So her artwork is going to be featured on the calendar cover and inside. 700 entries.

Yeah. Our students continue to impress us. And then lastly, I wanted to share this story. So I was at Merrimack last week, I believe, and I was talking to Mr.

Osborne. Mr. Osborne, if anybody knows, he was at Merrimack fifth grade teacher for quite a few years. And then we had the science opening and he became our science specialist at Merrimack.

And so I'm like, so how is it going? How's everything, you know, this year you're teaching new and he actually said, and I quote, I feel guilty when I get my paycheck because I love what I do so much. He is in heaven. He said the students are remarkable.

And then he said what was amazing is he's preparing the students for the science fair that they have. And it's going to be on March 8th, so all the elementary schools participate in it. And he shared how high school students go to Merrimack to mentor the science kids and help them presenting, fine-tuning their science projects. And so these are just pictures of our high school students working with elementary students.

And again, volunteering to do that. So amazing students everywhere that you see. So I just wanted to share those highlights with our students and what they're up to. Switching gears, Long Range Facilities Master Plan.

I'm not sharing a lot tonight, obviously, but just know that anyone who's in the audience or viewing right now, our Long Range Facilities Master Plan is nearing completion. Spervantage, the next board meeting, yes, February 19th to give us their final results. And again, just a reminder, it was I think the last time we went through a process, this in depth was 2008. That was quite a while ago.

We had over 110 committee members involved in the process. Almost 300 community members gave input through a survey. We had about, I can't even remember how many community forums that we had, at least eight where we had opportunities for communities to come in and give us input on this. So all of those results are being compiled and Paragon will present all of that at the next board meeting.

So looking forward to the results there and then ongoing conversations after that. And then finally tonight we have two presentations that I'm looking forward to hearing about. The first one is Cognia presentation. Mr.

Sucker is going to be here and Dr. Gajewski is going to be at the table and they're going to talk to us about Cognia, which is a global organization that works across I think 80 countries and they come into schools and it's almost like a continuous improvement process. So our Clayton High School has been in partnership for over 100 years with this and they come in and they have rubrics and they get into all the information but I just think it important for our community and the board to hear what a thorough process it is and an external entity coming into our high school to look at all of our programming school and the amount of work they put into that A lot of kudos and a lot of celebrations, and the best part is that they show us areas that we need to continue to improve on. So that's our first presentation.

And then the next one is just a legislative update from our friend, Jerry Hockman, who always has been helping us and volunteering. I do want everybody to recognize that. He's volunteering his time and helping us with this. And thank you to Leo, who, because of the board and Leo, we have our legislative advisory committee for the first time this year.

And Leo's our board rep on that, and he's been working with Jerry. They're having meetings and keeping us updated on what's happening in Jefferson City, which we really need to pay close attention on, for sure. And thank you, Leo. I know you've also been attending all the PTO meetings to let them know about what's happening.

You're going to steal my entire report for later in the meeting. Oh, sorry. Okay, there you go. Just rewind.

Pretend I didn't say that. So, yeah, that is our update for now. And Lucia is not well, so I hope she's taking care of herself so we don't have a student update today. Right, I was going to say that as well, that no student rep update tonight, but we look forward to Lucia feeling better and joining us next time.

So, at this time, I'd call on Dr. Kaczewski and Mr. Sucher to come talk to us about Cognia. Good evening.

I see Coach Hudson left. I thought he was just really excited about Cognia when I walked in and saw I'm sitting here. But no, I was really glad we got to recognize Brendan. But thank you for having us here this evening.

Craig and I are going to talk a little bit about Cognia and the history and give a little context for it and talk about how we use it and how we move forward using the information that we gained from the Cognia visit. First off, Cognia is an organization that has been in existence for over 100 years, and Clayton High School has had a relationship with this organization, and it's gone through a couple iterations. But as Dr. Patel said, for over 100 years, and we actually have the longest continuous relationship with Cognia in Missouri and actually one of the longest in the Midwest.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superroportion O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superroportion Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And one of the things that happened with Cognia was they really evaluated and really reached out to the members and said, you know, how can we be helpful?

One of the things that we said was this idea that, you know, aligning with, like, the various state accreditation systems and allowing us to, like, kind of adapt and not be so cookie cutter. And they very much really responded. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried We did an engagement review at that time and basically our focus at the time was around aligning arrows One of the things that the visit found was we had all these great initiatives and I call them pockets of excellence but they weren really coordinated actually And so one of the big focuses of that work was aligning our arrows and making sure that the old adage of work smarter, not harder, And making sure that we were aligning all of our efforts. And as a result of that, we developed our building PDC that functions in alignment with district PDC and district improvement goals.

Also out of that work came our equity committee and our wellness committee, which function as subcommittees of the larger group so that all of our efforts are aligned. So fast forward another five years, actually, the feedback from the 2015 engagement review focused on the need for formative versus summative assessment and how we were using assessment in the classroom. And so that actually kicked off a lot of our work focusing on formative and summative assessment. It got a little sidetracked during COVID in there, but ultimately that was really kind of the impetus for a lot of our work in our grading reforms or grading for equity.

And it was really important to our foundational work and where we are today. Then our next review was in 2019. And then one of the things we focused on there that came out of that review was how we use data to form or inform our school improvement plan. And so basically, you know, kind of analogous to a funnel, the strategies were protocols and structures to access and analyze data to produce focused and needed goals.

Which leads us to our last review, which was last year in 2024, and the Cognia group actually revamped how they, how some of the structures they use as part of the review process to make it, like, much more adaptable, and Craig's going to talk about that now. Thank you, Dan. So what we're presenting here with intention is kind of a continuum of Dan starting out with the big picture in regard to overview history and context. And what I want to move to now is to help you understand what the work was really like, both in terms of our specific actions and the different components of the review.

So an important time stamp, like Dan said, was about one year ago, almost exactly in the middle of February of 2024, when we hosted the review. And then eight months prior to that, we worked with a lead evaluator from Cognia, not completely, but mostly on four important areas, four important project areas. And those involve families, students, and staff producing data and are making meaning out of that data. And so what I'm going to try real hard to do within six minutes is to try and encapsulate eight months of pretty dense work.

And I think I can get there. And just not to interrupt you, but you guys have the clicker there if you need for the slides. Okay. So and actually, yeah, this is right on time because I'm going to address the four bullets.

Thank you, Mr. President. Latitude to schools to choose what data holds the most meaning for them. So it was with easy and obvious logic that we focused on student achievement on the SAT standardized test series and also our EOC scores because those are foundational to how we developed our school improvement plan and how we continue to look at assessing the effectiveness of that plan and adjustments that we need to make.

The second category were stakeholder surveys. We used separate related surveys for staff input, perceptional input, families, and also students. We did actually choose Cognia's standard surveys because they were written in a manner that both aligned with each other and also aligned with what I'm going to talk about next, which are the performance standards and the review of that. But before we do I kind of want to interject that already you starting to appreciate I think that what we producing is a rich source of deep data to make meaning out of in impactful ways for us and our kids And strategically what we want to accomplish in any and all times is to triangulate that data right to try and find multiple data sources that kind of speak to the same point of focus So if we transition from the stakeholder surveys to the performance standards, there are a lot of parallel prompts and considerations for reflection in those.

Now, the standards, there are 30 total standards that Cognia has, and they're in four categories, engagement of learning, culture of learning, leadership for learning, and growth in learning. And so what we did with those 30 standards was broke them into groups that best aligned with different cohorts of folks, both in our building and district-wide. So as an example of that, our full staff evaluated about seven or eight of the standards. Our curriculum coordinators looked at about four of the standards.

Memory doesn't serve all the math, but it would add up to 30 if I got it all right. But also building leadership council looked at some of the standards, building administration, and also our building professional learning committee. When we did that, we applied a really strict protocol that was very important for efficiency and effectiveness. Superroportion Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Superroportionate, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Again, silently themselves to record their rating on the four-point scale and to try and come up with as many examples of evidence that would kind of be used to justify that rating. So when we did that for 30 different standards, again, you can imagine the wealth of data that came out of that, both as numeric metrics and also the kind of qualitative evidences, examples through that. The last component, the acronym is the ELIOT.

It's the Effective Learning Environment Observational Tool. This is a fantastic tool. It was developed in 2012. It's been continuously utilized and refined since then.

It has rich basis in research. It confirms its reliability. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Okay, I do.

It's true. And myself. And that instrument had seven categories, and each of those had about four or five different indicators within them. And the categories are probably predictable and then helpful to hear to confirm your thinking.

Looking for aspects of equitable learning, high expectations, supportive learning, active learning, progress monitoring, well-managed classrooms, and then digital learning. So from that effort, we were able to execute together 40 classroom observations. Okay, so again, I picked these because that was primarily the work of data collection that involved all of our stakeholders, families, students, and staff. And then there are other smaller pieces that was like an executive summary so folks could kind of understand sort of our demographics and shape.

But again, the bulk of the work toward continuous improvement really came through those endeavors and then what happened next, right? Because what Dan and myself as the lead writers needed to do was to cull through that comprehensive amount of information. And Cognitive does a fantastic job of training in this endeavor and the resources that support kind of organizing thinking and the results. Thank you.

of this was to first to take this massive amount of data and to analyze it. And then in that analysis to produce findings, of which there's many. And then an attempt to try and synthesize those findings to make it more definitive. And then with the synthesized findings then to drill into what is the root cause of those findings.

And then with the root causes, then we develop theories of action to do two really, really important things. And the first one's one that sometimes we miss. We need theories of action to continue to sustain the things that are giving us success. Those are as important as the next thing, right?

And then you know what the next thing is. These are also opportunities to look for opportunities to growth, for growth. And while Dan and I were the lead writers in this endeavor, we were shameless throughout the process to continually go back to various connections within our staff as individuals and groups. When we were looking at findings, here's some data and information.

Can you find a finding from this? And so we'd look to calibrate that and include the voices of our entire community in a way that wasn't burdensome and onerous because the process can become that way if you allow it to. And our message to staff from the beginning and throughout is we have a healthy obsession about continuous improvement. We're doing the work.

Within that, we're going to take a pause this year during this engagement review to get feedback from folks to document, to call, to come up with our theories of action, which is what we're able to share with our folks in the middle of February. Great. So, feedback. Thank you, Zach.

And one of the things I want to point out, too, is while we have these reviews every five years, actually, that the idea that the improvement is continuous. We have annual check-ins and ongoing connections with our facilitator, actually, about our progress. And so this is kind of, I know, I think Sean Doherty brought it up, the evergreen model, so that we adapt it as we go. But in this past review, we were acknowledged for a noteworthy achievement.

And a noteworthy achievement is something that they identify as an exemplar for other districts. And specifically, the noteworthy achievement, I'm going to read it to you, is Clayton High School sustains a culture where staff and learners' well-being is at the heart of the institution's guiding principles. Student support, such as the Wellness Center and Learning Center, and administrators' personal and professional support of staff create conditions that benefit student and staff well-being. And then what they do is they take this rating and then they convert it to an overall score.

And our score was 320. And I don't know, Jeff, can you click on that score report for me? And so it's a little hard to see, but basically I just wanted to show there that actually it was obviously above 300. And the average score across all schools within Cognia worldwide is around 253.

And so that even the regional director for Cognia in the Midwest called me just to say that 320 is a score rarely seen, actually, that we should be particularly proud of that score. So, I mean, we really are, I mean, it certainly takes a village. So, not despite, but also with that score, there were a couple areas of improvement that were identified. And one of those areas of improvement was to continue to implement collaborative strategies with students to enhance student voice and choice in the classroom.

And that was some work we had started to dabble in in our work with empowered learning, but that was really emphasized and it was also, you know, kind of, you know, just affirming of the work that we were already starting and where we needed to go. Which I think that's also particularly timely as we look at our long-range facilities master plan. One of the things that was mentioned was as we continue to look at how we empower our students, how we incorporate voice and choice with our students, a significant part of that is the programming and the educational opportunities that we provide for kids. We need to make sure that our facilities match that programming and also are in a position to amplify that student choice and student voice in the opportunities that students have at Clayton High School And then another area of improvement was to continue to evaluate methods to identify teachers for leadership roles within the institution So, in other words, promoting teacher leadership, teacher leaders like Craig, actually, and in various areas when we can within the organization whenever we have the opportunity.

And so that's some work we had started, and we've continued that work in earnest. So that's it. So we're happy to take questions. Thank you so much.

Wow. I'll open it up to the rest of the board if anyone has comments or questions first before I go. Anyone? Kim?

It's okay. I don't know. I'm not. Okay.

I'll go first. I'm probably the worst person to go first because I think it's great that you guys do this, But I have to be honest, I don't really understand what it is. So there's so much educational and pedagogical jargon. Are you going to chime in here with me?

Can I ask a question somewhat differently? Sure. So this is a lot of information, but it's good information, and congratulations on the score. It sounds – what is the max?

I don't know. Is it like 350 or – 321. Do we know? The scale tops out at 300.

Can someone just help us maybe understand how this fits into our overall sort of, you know, whether it's connected to MSIP or assessment program or whatever it is. Like how does this fit into that entire strategy that we pursue as a school district? I think that's the coaching question. And honestly, what I think is probably the most value for everybody's understanding.

Our state accreditation is necessary, is valuable. The accountability is something that I want all schools and us too to be able to produce. And the depth of impact that's allowed through that process is pretty thin. It's an accountability measure.

It's a reporting measure, and it's really, really important. The depth of reflection that happened among our staff through the different structures that I showed. The actionable mindset that we are interested in continuous improvement is significant and palpable. I've been able to lead this work since 2014 prior to the last review.

Thank you. And again, I would circle back and say it's an opportunity for all staff to be deeply reflective and to actionably focus on improvement. Well, and just to also emphasize that, I think like when you look at MSEP, I mean, it's so like was it 60% is EOCs or MAP scores and your attendance is a category and school funding is a category. And, like, there's a lot of checkboxes, and not that those things aren't important, but, like, this, you know, process really takes into account all of the stakeholders, gets firsthand feedback from all of the stakeholders, students, parents, teachers, incorporates classroom observations and various trends and things that are going on within the school.

So it gives you a much more holistic picture of, I think, a school's well-being, actually, than say the state accreditation system does. So this certainly adds color and a lot of depth to an important process. So the depth and breadth of this process fosters a culture of self-improvement that staff throughout the district are embracing now that it's been in place for the last 15 years, at least since 2010, since history that you gave us. Okay, that's very helpful.

And continuous improvement, now you're speaking my language. So I guess then the questions that I would have, as far as areas of improvement, you identified two. And I think it's great you shared the, I think this is just like, this is like page 33 of the report. Maybe it would be helpful if we could see the whole report to like understand and digest kind of all the things that we heard which sound great And then my only other question is were those just the two areas that you wanted to highlight or were there other areas It sounds like there were, given the breadth of stakeholders that you surveyed and the amount of information that you come back in.

And my guess is those go through the structures you already have in place in school. Well, and then as you go through these reviews every five years or so, do you ever go back? Is it backward looking? So like when you said in 2015 you did, you know, you looked at formative versus summative assessments, and that's when you did grading reforms and grading for equity.

Do you ever go back then and, you know, see how that stuff is going and if it needs to be adjusted or changed, or was that the right decision, was that the wrong decision? That's part of the process. So part of the process is the initial part is kind of reviewing where you've come. And since the process is ongoing, that's kind of what we're always referring back to the initial growth areas from the previous review.

Great. So who is going to be – what bench strength are you creating for Coach Suit here to do this for the next 15 years? That would be my next question. I thought you were talking about left-hand pitch.

This is, I think, in line with theirs. I agree. I would love to see the entire thing. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. I was wondering why you were waving. I agree with what they were saying. To be able to have and digest this whole packet would be great, You know, for a wonderful Saturday night event.

Could you maybe, just to help us understand here, like give us an example and then walk us through these steps? Is that a possibility? Okay. The steps where we analyze the data findings?

Yes. That process. Use their standard survey and then the engagement of learning and the leadership and growth and something of learning. Okay, so let's use an area of growth that our evaluators suggested to us.

So that was touched on in responses in the parent surveys, the student surveys, and the staff surveys, right? That was also touched on in a particular standard of the 30 that targeted levels of empowered learning, student voice, and choice that were happening. That was also touched on within the observational tool called the Elliott, right? And so from that, we had a triangulation that focused on this area that we also knew this is something that we need to get better at, and we also know that this is something that is an important district goal for us, as well as a building goal for us.

And so I hope I'm answering your question directly, but that's an example that I try to keep brief, but kind of shows how that was distilled into an area of focus that we need. From multiple data sources. Yeah. Okay.

I want to say that I'm totally impressed and super excited that we do this. Really glad that as a district this is important to us. I'm really happy that we pointed out here that we, you know, the bare minimum is doing what is required, MSIP, etc. But for you to understand that that is such a, you know, shallow look at what we could do to improve and knowing that we are so, as a district, so focused on improvement is just, it's what makes our district what it is.

And, you know, we see with that number that it's happening. So I just want to say I appreciate everything that you did here for this report and the fact that we continue to be involved. I hope that we, you know, continue this effort. I think it's magnificent.

Can you tell me a little bit, first I also want to point out that I really appreciate that you've talked about how programming has to do with our facilities as well. I think that just so great that we continuing to looking and seeing as a district and to the public to know that these things like our facilities are so instrumental in making sure that our teachers and our students have the facilities the programming that they need to continue to do these amazing things that our students are doing like Nisha pointed out earlier The only question I have is a very tiny one but I didn know what you meant by digital learning Can you explain what that category is? What is digital learning? Digital learning is using technology in the learning process.

That's what I thought. So tell me, what does it look about? How much time is being spent digitally? What is the question there?

What's... The indicators, I could pull them up and I will. I'll share the Elliott indicators to you, and that'll be the best, most comprehensive answer. Okay.

But to the extent of access to the technology is important. And I think frequency of use was actually one of the... It is one of them. It was one of them.

During the class, I'm assuming? Yes, during the class observation. Okay. I would love to know more.

This may not be this kind of discussion, but it is something that I'm curious about with our district, Certainly at the high school level. But I know that I'm going to assume that you take all this information and you help not just the high school, but you say to yourself, oh, let's see how doing something different at the middle school will help this thing once they get to the high school. Right? These things that you're indicating.

And even all the way down to the elementary level. And I just am curious about digital learning. Again, this may not be the right, it's not on the agenda per se, but you mentioned it. And so I will say that as we continue to use digital everything, and AI, et cetera, there's so many technology things we could discuss.

But I do want us as a district to be aware of how much digital learning is happening and whether or not we think that that's a benefit or clearly it's part of our education, it's part of our society. But I really want us to think about the difference between a kindergarten classroom, much less a high school classroom, in terms of the amount of time they spend in front of a screen versus not. And I'd like to know specifically what you found out around that for our high school students. I made a note of that, and I'll tell you one thing because I just kind of looked at it as I was looking at different things.

But it was curious because on that, Elliot, seven categories, right? The way that our observers rated us in the digital learning category, that was the one category we were actually lower than national average. Great. I'm very happy to hear that.

Well, and to your point, even if I recall, Craig, too, like the observation team, we had some robust conversations around it because the indicator, I think the greater the frequency, the higher the score. Actually, the usage, which as an observational group, we didn't necessarily agree with that. We were using the tool, but that was probably the most controversial, I think, indicator in the whole instrument, which I think is very good, but there was a level of equating frequency with a positive score, and we didn't necessarily agree with that, actually. I'm really glad you said that.

But it was our lowest score across the board, actually. Awesome. That's right. That's why we only got 320.

And, you know, I almost hesitate on the word because it almost sounds sensational, but that part of it almost felt a little bit antiquated, and I'm only speaking for myself right now, but maybe not, where I feel like in almost every technology conversation, it feels kind of antiquated because what's going to happen the next day, right? Right. Right. That's a good point.

We know that's a worthy challenge for us to continue to try to solve. Right. I think that's it. Congratulations and thank you for all your hard work.

You actually answered the couple questions that I had, so I will also just join and say congratulations. This is clearly a monumental task that is obviously very worthwhile. So thank you for all the work you put into this. I understand.

The only criticism I have is I wish that I would have been made aware of this sooner. Like, this is really cool, and we hadn't heard about it until now. So I love that we're doing this, and again, and that we value continuous improvement, and that we've seen, we've gotten such great feedback, clearly, from our score on it. So congratulations, I just think.

Great job. Oh, and I did have one question. Are there any other schools in the region doing this that you know of, or is this? So what's interesting was we used to be the, we used to have the third longest tenure, I think, actually in Missouri.

And U City and Webster Groves had been doing it, I think, like. Four years longer than us, actually, and then they stopped around COVID, I believe, or shortly before. But there are other schools, because it's not just public schools. There are a fair number of private schools that do it in the area because they've been part of our cohort of schools that we get together.

They have a conference every year, too, where we kind of exchange notes, and we were invited to represent. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. End SIP goals and these goals earlier, that was helpful. I just think it's, you know, in any industry, right, it's great to have an outside entity give a, you know, 360 look on what you're doing and get that feedback.

So I'm really happy that we've invested in this. So thank you for all your hard work. And congrats. Just real quick, and I would like to acknowledge Craig for all the work and his partnership as we co-chaired this work because he's an amazing teacher, but he's an amazing coach and an amazing teacher leader.

And so it certainly would not have been possible without his hard work. Thank you. That's great. Thank you.

Chris, I think Chris had one more thing to say. I don't want to stop this class. That's okay. You're wonderful.

You know I am. Okay. Okay. I want to say, I don't know how this got on the agenda, but I just want to sort of echo what you said, which is I'm really glad that the board is hearing about this.

You know, I've been watching the board, you know, and been on the board for so long and I've never heard about this. And these are the types of things that I think are really important for us, not just as a board, but as a community to hear about. Thank you. Thank you both again.

Thanks. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Okay, we are moving on to 6.2, which is our legislative presentation with Jerry Hockman. And as Dr. Patel, while Jerry's coming up, as Dr. Patel said earlier, I just want everyone to understand that Jerry's a volunteer, and we're so lucky to have him volunteer with us in Clayton.

He not only volunteers to help our legislative advisory committee, but Jerry also volunteers to help school districts across the region be more informed and active when it comes to legislation. He sends out newsletters to school boards across the region. He participates in monthly Zoom calls about legislation. So I just want to thank Jerry for all your volunteer work, not just for Clayton, but for all of the districts around the area on this very important topic.

So we appreciate your volunteer time. Thank you. I'm sitting back there, and the first thing that came to mind was, is this heaven? No, it's Clayton.

That is high praise coming from you. I mean, no, seriously. Hi, I'm Jerry Huckman, class of 1970, and I'm listening, and I have former colleagues, sons and daughters who are here tonight. I have former students who are here tonight, and I remember North Central evaluations and accreditation processes, so it all just kind of comes around.

And in addition, side note, Pam and Dr. Patel and I were in the Family Center this morning and saw your granddaughter. So it really comes full circle. Yeah, yeah.

Now, I'm retired, and after 50 years of public education service, and doing a variety of things, but that's the number one, being a grandpa. So, thank you. I'll take a few moments tonight to kind of do an overview for you, and then I know that Leo's going to pick it up from there with some discussion. I like to do a quick overview kind of put everything in context with what happening with legislation this year talk very briefly about the process and then get into some content specifically some major themes of bills that are floating already just two or three and then zero in on House Bill 711 which is one of several open enrollment bills because I know that a topic that is moving along So very quickly, this year is different than previous years for a variety of reasons.

One of them is that we have a new governor, we have a new lieutenant governor, they have a new administration. There are over 60 new legislators in Jefferson City this year, 10 new senators, and I believe it's like 50 some new representatives of which one of them is one of yours. And so that means it's different. They're still getting to know each other, and they're still getting acquainted.

They're still seeing who's going to be following certain things. And so they're building a culture of what this new legislature is going to be. The Republicans still have a supermajority, but even that feels a bit different. So just kind of keeping that in mind because they want to establish themselves as the new group.

So already we're hearing they're focusing on some things that haven't been touched on in previous years. To give you some context, last year there were 32 bills. This does not count budget bills. 32 bills passed the entire session.

That's the lowest, I think, in like three decades. This year, when I did this PowerPoint a couple weeks ago, there were already 1,700 bills filed, and they're still going up because the final deadline is not there. Very quickly, the legislative process. I mentioned the other day to the committee, if you remember Schoolhouse Rock, it's still the same thing.

But it's important to remember because bills start in one house or the other. They go to a committee, which is very important to watch because that committee chair is the gatekeeper of what gets heard. Hearing a bill is when it starts to make its movement. When a bill goes to a committee and it's heard, they will discuss it.

There are public hearings. You can come testify. You can send in testimony to both the Senate and to the House. And then that committee votes, and if that committee votes the bill out, and I'll make a reference later, then it goes to the full House.

I'll start there. Then they debate it. And then if they pass it, it goes over to the Senate, starts back at the committee level. It may or may not work its way through to the Senate floor.

When both groups have passed the exact same bill, same wording, then if they pass it, it goes to the governor. So it's that same process, but there's several opportunities for you to have your voice heard throughout that process. I'll talk more about that. I mentioned this in some of the Friday phone calls that we've had about building relationships with legislators, and as I said, you have one of the new ones, so I hope he's reaching out to you to say, tell me a few things about how things should work and what can I learn from you.

But staying informed, paying attention to what committees, you know, that some of your legislators are on, who's on the education committees, because you just never know when that one comment you make may go somewhere and make a difference. There are several people tracking legislation. The School Boards Association, State School Boards Association, School Administrators Association, School Business Officials Association, the MNEA, and on and on and on. They all have platforms.

They all track legislation. I borrow a lot of their stuff, some of those blurbs that you see in some of these updates. But they do track it, and they are valuable insight into what's moving along, and I have conversations with them routinely. As I know, Dr.

Patel tunes into many of those phone calls to listen to what's going on. The most important aspect of that is getting content and then seeing what is getting traction. That's the key. And I'll get more into that.

In the next slide, do I have this? Thank you. Let's see, yeah, advocacy. So this is a topic that I believe one of the reasons you wanted to talk is what is the school board's role in advocacy?

That's up to the school board. That's up to you. And usually the way to think about this, and one of the meetings with Dr. Patel, she mentioned it goes back to our mission and the mission statement.

And then here you focus on the graduate and what does that mean. And that really is the number one guiding principle when trying to have a litmus test for legislation, how will it affect our district. But then there's also more specificity in some others. Will you take a stance on issues in a general sense?

And will you take a stance on a specific piece of legislation? And both can be important. As I mentioned, there are ways you can deliver your comments officially to legislators, to the committees when they meet, and also through your representatives and your senator. So what happening in Jefferson City Next bill There are some major themes One of them is school choice of which one of those is open enrollment which I will get back to in a moment School choice comes in a variety of ways across the country and in Missouri Charter schools are essentially school choice Last year in the open enrollment, in one of the bills, there was a move to allow charter schools in St.

Louis County. That was taken out of the bill along with St. Charles, so the only expansion this year was in Boone County. That's Columbia in that area.

Surely that will come back around. Open enrollment is another means of school choice where a parent could say I would like my child to go from our district to that district. And that's what we'll talk about later. One that was debated heavily last year was Senate Bill 727, which was school vouchers, Which essentially says that a family that qualifies with a certain home, you know, what their family income is, if it's below a particular level, if that family wanted to apply for a voucher, which is exactly what it sounds like, to apply to go to another school district that is participating in the program, they could take that.

They could, school district or private school or parochial school. They could take that and go to a foundation, get their name into the hopper, and apply to go to that school and possibly be accepted. That's a big leap from the others because that's public money going to private institutions. That'll be another conversation perhaps.

But so that's one big area. There's a lot of movement already on open enrollment. Another significant area this year, which has gotten a bit of attention in previous years, excuse me, is taxation. This week, the House Committee heard very quickly bills on income tax reform changes, reducing income tax, earning tax opportunity zones, personal property taxes, tax credits, personal property assessments, and income tax.

Everyone trying to either eliminate one of those or reduce them or phase them down over time. Every one of those bills affects every public entity in the state. It will affect you. So more on that perhaps at another time.

Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. There are some exceptions that are getting attention already this week and will continue to, but it's just not the same as it was on those divisive issues. So let's talk about open enrollment. Open enrollment is a concept where, as I said, the bottom line is that a parent, family could say, I want my child to go to a different district.

If that district's participating, they could apply to go to that district and possibly get in. There are two bills in the House already that have been heard in the Education Committee. Today, they were voted out of the committee, and so that means they will now be delivered to the full House to debate when the Speaker of the House decides to put it into a discussion. Last year, it was like a month.

It was not immediate. Who knows what will happen this year? So that's already been sent to the House floor for when they're ready to debate it. If it makes it through there, then it has to go back to the Senate.

The Senate tomorrow is holding a committee, their education committee is hearing Senate Bill 70 and 215, which are pretty much the exact same open enrollment bills with the same content that I'm going to talk to you about. Couldn't have told you that two days ago because they just posted it. You have to post within 24 hours, and so they wait until like 24 hours and one minute to put it on the website so people can find out that there's a particular hearing coming up. So right off the bat, there are several open enrollment bills.

So let me talk about what that means and then allow you to talk about that. The bill state similar to last year that the Department of Education would be required to require every school district in the state to develop a policy about open enrollment. Doesn't mean you're participating, but you have to have a policy that says we discussed it And there are procedures as to how that would happen. And let me talk about the other direction and then I'll get back to the eligibility and all.

The difference between that participation does not mean that if you don't participate, you don't lose students or potentially lose students because every student in the state is eligible to apply to one of those receiving districts. Spervantage of the year, the cap is set at 3% so no school district could lose more than 3% of their previous year's population going to other school districts. The Senate version has it at 5%. Spervantage, P.D., and the other one is that the state has a very high rate of Follow that.

There is an eligibility as to who can apply and who can be accepted. So essentially, a school district that's on a receiving end has to take any student that applies, and there are very few exceptions. One is if they've had a disciplinary offense that falls into that type one category, board expulsion hearing or whatever that layer is now. Oddly, there is one that if a child with disabilities applies to go to a district and that district does not provide those services, that district does not have to take the student.

That will be contested heavily throughout the process because that won't fly. In St. Louis County, it really doesn't matter because the special school district is the overlay, so the services are provided or they would have to provide. Other than that, there's a few pieces about athletics so that school districts are not recruiting.

And so if somebody in high school tries to transfer, they have to sit out a year. If they apply in seventh grade, they don't. And so there are some nuances to that. As I said, DESE would establish the process, and different this year is that they would handle all of the paperwork, if you will.

The school district doesn't have to accept the applications and go through them at all. DESE would say, okay, these are the students that have applied to your school district, and then they figure out on a lottery basis, but that's questionable too, which ones then would actually come to the superintendent. Superintendent would go through those and decide, is there any reason why we wouldn't take any of these students? Then there's an appeal process for the parent.

But again, DESE handles all of that paperwork. Funding. So funding, that is, the primary funding question is about the funds that you receive from the state. Separate that out from the funds you receive from the local taxpayers.

So a sending district would lose that student's count in your enrollment count, and you would lose whatever your state funding is for your students, which I think Leo mentioned is about, you're held harmless at what, $500? Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. So if we had those two, we'd divide it, our ADA would change. We'd look like we've got a different number, but our beginning number, our dollar you see, I don't think so.

It's not like a district that is getting dollars through the formula. They're going to see a change. Right. Right.

So, thank you. So exactly what was just stated, that the child that goes to another district, then the state has to provide funds For that additional student in their ADA, and if it's a district that receives 70, 80% of their funds from the state, that's a significant number in their revenue. And so they will receive those funds. The transportation is an issue this year, some back and forth on it, as it's written now that school districts would have to provide transportation, but this year, unlike last, and I was rereading again today, there is a transportation fund.

But the eligibility for that initially is if a child has a disability or if they receive free and reduced lunch. And then there was talk last year about if it's a neighboring district and you can get to a bus stop and things like that. So there's different versions on how transportation would be handled and the funding that goes with that. We're digging into that.

I need to get more detail for you. I don't want to, you know, misinform you on that. But that, of course, would be a key part to look into. One factor to keep in mind also with the overall program on this is that Clayton dollars go to the state of Missouri.

Taxpayers pay into the state of Missouri. So if the state of Missouri is providing funds for a program like this that may go up to $40 million or whatever it may cost the state for transportation for other reasons, taxpayers from across the state are funding this program and not getting anything back home for this program. So you begin to want to calculate that as well. There are some sticking points as last year.

They want charter, the sponsors would like charters to be able to accept these students. There's a question, will this create resegregation? And there is definite potential for that to occur. And then the recruiting and some of the other things I mentioned.

Went through that quickly. There's a lot of pages in this bill. But one of the things I want to mention is that there's a lot of pages in this bill that want to get the I will, and of course in the updates, give you progress reports as to what's happening. I know Leo's going to pick it up with some discussion, but if I can answer any questions about this or anything else, I'd be happy to do so.

So, thank you. Thank you so much. So, Leo, you have more to present to us, you mean? I'll tell you what's going on with the legislative committee now or in my report later.

Okay. And I'm happy to talk about this now. I think, you know, I guess I'd be interested in Dr. Hockman's view on whether this is likely to change significantly through the Senate process or whether we're premature in talking about it.

And I guess I'd say my view is if we're at all premature, I would confine myself to commenting on some particular aspects of this bill and try and avoid a broad philosophical discussion of open enrollment, which is more difficult. But just commenting, I'd be happy to point out some things I saw in this bill in addition. Yeah, go ahead. I noticed that the policy, which we have to pass regardless, has some language in here that just sounded like a lot of fun to deliberate at the board table.

Insufficient classroom space. We have to define insufficient classroom space. And I guess I had a strong reaction to that a little bit. That would be a challenging conversation to have for our district.

But either of the Dr. Patel, Dr. Hockman, I mean, when you're making decisions about putting kids in classrooms, is it really about the space in the room or is it about educational arrangements with the right number of kids in front of teachers? It's not about space in the room usually, is it?

You're correct. It's about the number, the needs also of the students that we're placing in the classroom. We're not looking at fire codes. We're not looking at physical space.

We're looking at, I mean, I understand we comply with fire codes. Yes, correct. But that's not what's driving the decision. I was like, oh, we do look at that, but yes, that's not what's driving that.

And I guess I would just say I don't particularly, it doesn't delight me for the state to be asking us to define that category in a piece of legislation that we opt out of potentially. I don't know why the state is requiring every district to define that amount if it's going to remain an opt-out program. I just don't trust the state on that. There a bit of history there because the desegregation program that some of you may remember as having been students at the time was an open enrollment program Yeah.

Pretty much the exact same, except the funding that went to the district and to back to the city was significantly higher. But it was the same thing. You could not not accept students and say, well, we don't have enough space. Now, it wasn't defined.

There was no square footage piece, but there were some districts that would try that, and they would be contested, and they would say, you have space. You can fit kids in your classroom. You can't tell us that 10 kids in a class. So it's not necessarily a formula, and so there's some other history in some of this language.

It's a very least, a very challenging thing for a district to define. And I think it would be a challenging thing for this district to define, given the value we place on student-teacher ratio and some of these things. And then you get to the second question of defending it, and somebody else comes in who says, I don't have the same standard for a classroom space that you do. Anyway, that was the other piece of it that jumped out at me, that and the funding piece.

And then one other thing I guess I would like to just talk about what declining enrollment looks like for districts that go through that and what effect that has. I mean, the bottom line with that, as I understand it, is that enrollment declines, but you can't decrease your costs proportionately, at least not quickly. Your capital costs tend to be fixed, and your personnel costs can be reduced, but that can be sticky and slow. And so it's a very difficult situation to put a district in when you put them in the position of 3% declining enrollment year over year, or if it's more, it's more.

And those are my thoughts on this bill. Thank you. I'm thinking about how you mentioned, you know, getting their foot in the door, you said, right? And then things grow like the percentage max that can leave.

And I'm thinking, too, about that as it's written right now, it's an opt-in program. But how long until they're thinking it's going to be, you know, mandated, like you have to participate program. So I think it's all, those are all things to consider as we pay attention to this and keep in the back of our heads where some of these are probably headed in the future, too. If I could, you made me think of one thing I should have mentioned in the context of this is that rural Missouri has a very different view of this than some of their own legislators do.

The small school districts, and we are a state that has over 550 school districts. I mean, just kind of stop and think about that. That's a lot of school districts of 300 kids, 400, not schools, school districts of 300 kids, 400 kids. And they see this also as a foot in the door, as the lever to get school districts to consolidate, which is definitely an agenda of many of the legislators, and it has been.

And they're looking at it as efficiency. And I won't go into that because there are other models. But outstate folks are worried about that because if you're a school of 300 kids and you talk about capacity and you have, you know, very quickly a first grade that's got 14 kids in it and a second grade that's got nine kids in it, and then you lose kids, how low do you go before you say, okay, we have to combine? And that means we're going to lose a teacher because we don't have the revenue to pay that teacher.

So that's what they are desperately worried about in the small districts. And also they are very worried about recruiting from the moderate sized districts that surround them. So it's not a slam dunk as they found out last year. This bill made it through the House very quickly.

It sat in the Senate for months. And then because they focused so much at the very, very end on the school vouchers, it just went away. So we'll see what happens this year. When you mentioned the transportation, the district would have to pay for the transportation, which district?

The sending or the receiving? No the receiving district has to pay And again I heard two different things this week from two reliable sources and the language in the bill is of course not clear for somebody like me But don bank on anything no pun intended and I will get details on that for you Okay Thanks Any other general questions or comments What is the bill number, the House bill number? Oh, it's not 7-11. This one is 7-11.

Same sponsor as last year. This sponsor has brought it forward. This is his fifth year in a row, and I have to share this. I know you have a lot on your agenda.

Every person that spoke against this bill in the hearing, I'm talking about the legislators who were speaking against it, the few Democrats in the room, every one of them, the first thing that it was compliment the sponsor. Because he has heard, he's brought this forward, and he's just as diplomatic as could be. He's not fiery. He's not trying to change the politics in Missouri.

For him, it's, I just don't understand why a child can't go to the neighboring district if their parents want to send them there. And as polite as can be about it, and that's his explanation. He has no other agenda. And that's kind of nice, too.

Very sincere. So he's at it again. And you said there's a similar Senate bill, 70 and 215? Yes.

70 and 215, hearing at 8.30 tomorrow morning, if you'd like to listen to it. Great. So there's two very similar bills going through House and Senate. One has passed and it's going.

How do they reconcile the language? Well, first within either house, because they will, like, there may be four bills in the house on the exact same language on a topic. And eventually they have to decide which one will carry the ball. And it's going to be this sponsor, this bill.

So they have to negotiate that internally and see what happens. Then if it goes to the other house, it's a negotiation. Sometimes it just goes through the committee or they're looking at their own bills in the Senate. Their language is moving forward.

They may pass it, and then it will turn into HJR, House Joint Resolution. And so they will form a separate committee of both representatives to negotiate the language that they could possibly both live with. It's just a back and forth process until they land on something that they think will fly. And what was spoken in the, what came up often in the hearing earlier this week about the House bill was the Senate version, when they know when the Senate gets it, that there will be much more discussion about charter schools than there is in the House.

It's not in the language right now, but they know that will be something that they will try to push through with their version. So there are people that read the tea leaves on that and we'll see what that. You had mentioned that there is open enrollment in some other states. Yes.

Has there been enough time with that in place to kind of understand some of the impacts of that? Yes. Okay. Anything you might want to share?

A broad answer. I want to say there's over 40 states that have some version of school choice, and Missouri's on that list because of the voucher program, the empowerment scholarship program that was started two years ago. I think Minnesota was the first state that did this over 20 years ago, and there it's just kind of like the way we do things here. And the example I gave the other day is, Clayton has always known what percentage of students who live in Clayton will not attend Clayton schools.

What percentage approximately will go to private and parochial schools. And there's usually a pattern and you can track that and see. And so, this is sort of the same thing, that at some point, you know, the pendulum will swing and then every district who's participating That number will land and then what the flow is will land and the procedures. I was a superintendent of three school districts in Massachusetts at the same time because they have regional districts and collaborative districts.

And so with that, there was also open enrollment. And so it's been in place there, I believe, since like 2003 or four. I went back and looked at all the studies that they did before they started, studies that they've done since then, the patterns of the funding and all of that. And so the pendulums kind of landed there as to what districts can expect I don know if any districts folded as a result of it but that would have happened So there has been a lot of there has been research on it And the achievement question you find 10 different answers to whether or not this has an effect on student achievement or not But I will say that the experience I had was one that many districts, county school districts will face, which is this district is more affluent than others, let's just say, this district here.

The question is, do we want to accept students from other districts? And the school committee where I was had that dilemma because the neighboring town had 100 kids in that school. And if they lost six kids, they'd have to lose a teacher because that's how much the teacher made was the amount of money that they were going to lose from state aid on that. So there's this relationship piece between neighboring districts and how do you play that out.

And so I was actually looking at those districts and see, and again, the pattern eventually ironed itself out. But yes, there is research, and I can dig some up for you and provide that to Dr. Patel if you like. And what I'd like to add to that is that there's less experience in states with education funding models the same as ours.

Right. I mean, it is important to understand that Missouri's education funding model is not the same that they have in the West Coast and the Mountain States. And there's a reason that this is the second year running that this bill has come up with financial provisions that don't make any sense. It's because it's hard to design it with financial provisions that make sense in Missouri's system.

I noticed today that I was looking through some charts that where Missouri ranks in terms of state funding for schools, and it's 50. Yeah, we're dead left. It's 50th because of exactly what you just said. Other states fund it completely differently.

Can I jump in? Okay. So first of all, I do want to say, I mean, you said at the beginning, but I mean, Dr. Hockman, I mean, thank you for all this effort.

I mean, you know, you are truly a public servant in all that you do. So I'll just really quickly, I'm, you know, just to say it on the record, I'm in the same place I was last year. You know, I am open to open enrollment in certain situations. And Dr.

Hockman's right when you say open enrollment, it's not a proper noun. It's, you know, because there's not one system, right? Open enrollment means different things depending on how it's constructed. But to me, at a sort of a generic level, if we have the opportunity, and there's, you know, what that, how we define that would be an ongoing conversation.

I think Leo's right. But if we, you know, if we as a community have the opportunity to change the dynamic of where a kid, what zip code a kid is born into determines his or her or their outcome, educational outcome. If we have the opportunity to provide a different pathway for that child, then I'm open to the discussion. You know, and really what's coming down, I don't know, Leo, maybe you're going to bring up during communication or whatever, but, you know, there's this, are we going to vote on this resolution or not, right?

And the resolution just says that we're not, you know, we oppose open enrollment in all forms, right? And that's where, you know, I have a problem voting for that. I'm open to open enrollment in certain situations. The 3% cap, I understand the long-term concern, but the 3% cap, which is the cap that's in front of us tonight, doesn't strike me as destructive to a school district when the counterweight is, can you change a child's life or a small handful of children's lives with a different educational outcome?

I will say that if we are going to bring this resolution up, we should invite Representative Mackey to come and address the board because he covers, he represents most of the school district. And he voted for it in the House Committee today. So we should allow him to explain why he supports it. Open enrollment is something that has both urban and rural support and urban and rural opposition and the same thing with a bipartisan support and opposition.

And the last thing I'll just sort of say on this is that the history, at least the recent history of this school board has been to not wade into political issues unless it is so black and white that you get unanimous agreement very quickly and it's really just, you know, we faced it with gun violence examples of racism. Other forms of discrimination. Open enrollment doesn't strike me as getting to that level. So, you know, I just sort of put that out there to consider here in terms of how we think about this as a group and as a team.

That's my soapbox on open enrollment for now. I want to ask about the taxation bills. So last year, there was a concern about eliminating the property tax, which I know was sort of a more of a political, you know, guy was running for governor and it is what it is, right? But is there anything that threatens the property tax as a taxation instrument moving through the legislature, or anything that could be approaching that that we should be aware of?

Because that's what I'm more concerned about tonight. There is one proposal to phase out property taxes as a source of funding altogether. Anyone who wants to put a resolution to that? Slow pass.

Right, right, right. Yes. Yeah, yeah, there's doing away with property tax, you know, shifting some of that burden to sales tax I was reading today, which is odd in the proposal because there's also a proposal to reduce sales tax on certain goods. You know, vehicle, you know, and how vehicles are assessed and resale of vehicles and when they can cap how much you can tax that.

Thank you. The Board of Education is funded. Right? And so, and in previous conversations, in past boards, right, and boards change every year, but in past boards, the question has been, you know, we would wade into a political issue when we think that we cannot execute on getting our kids to reach the profile of a graduate.

Threatening our funding is a much bigger issue to me than open enrollment, which, by the way, we may get a program in front of us. I might be against participating in that, right? I'm just talking about this as a sort of generic question, right? So if we're going to prioritize things, just from one of seven's perspective, the property tax issue is a much bigger threat to us than open enrollment.

I agree with you. Of course. I mean, there's no question. There's no question that that is a much more concrete threat.

I guess to Clayton, I guess there's a question which is more likely to proceed, but there's no question that when you look at our district, what has a concrete effect on our district, that's a much more direct issue. I just want to say about open enrollment. I mean, I took a position on this during the campaign. I don't have a categorical objection to open enrollment.

As Dr. Hockman said, the VIC program could be characterized as open enrollment if you look at it in squint. There's a set of criteria that I have in my mind about reliable funding that makes sense, I'm going to take a few minutes to address some of the issues that have been raised in the last few minutes. I'm going to talk about the impact of the legislative committee on sending districts.

That's my criteria that I have in my mind, one of seven. And so we'll talk a little more about the legislative committee, I guess. Maybe we'll talk about it now. I envision something coming up in front of the board, whether it's that particular resolution, I don't know yet.

I do envision something coming out of that committee to the board asking us to, you know, take a position as a board on some legislative matters. So, what do you mean by that? To the board? Like, to all boards?

To this board that we would vote yes or no on a document stating a position on either a particular piece of legislation or a set of principles. And both of those were discussed in our meeting. So I'll say to what Jason said, thinking about the direct threats to our district is obviously top priority. But I wanna say I think for me having this committee that we started which is so important isn just about our district It's about us understanding how we can support all districts.

In general, like I said maybe two years ago now, how we support public education in general. So as I said then, I think a lot of open enrollment bills are kind of the antithesis to what public education should be. However, there are exceptions to that, obviously, and who knows what will come about. But I am one, and I won't be on this board forever, but I am one that wants us as a board to discuss these issues, not just in a bubble of our district, but to look at them as not just a statewide event, but as a crisis of America at this point.

And I think maybe that's why Dr. Hopwood decides to do what he does, because, you know, you've been a lifelong educator and you realize that, you know, as a country, we have to make a decision about how important education is to us and how we continue to fund it and how we continue to, you know, help our citizens be the best citizens they can be. I mean, this is a very broad thing as well as a specific thing, like you're saying. So I would be one to say that if we're going to have a committee like this, that, you know, are we willing to talk about the stuff that's not the black and white big stuff or are we not?

And if we are willing to, you know, what's going to be our role and what's our purpose for doing that, et cetera? Here we are saying this bill may or may not come up, and we've kind of given some, I don't know if we like it sort of thing, but again, we have to decide as a board how much we're going to go forward in terms of testifying. Obviously, there's going to be a resolution, so we'll have a say there, but we could certainly have a say along the way on whatever bills we want to or not want to. So again, let's just think about that overall.

Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality, and I think that's a really important part of the discussion. For us to do that, if we are true believers in public education. I'll, you know, maybe playing into type here, I'll give a pragmatic reason to do the same thing, which is it doesn't work. It doesn't work to only show up on these things when it's affecting your bottom line, in my opinion.

I think Clayton is very distinctive in what affects it. It's really narrow compared to a lot of districts, and we're going to be separated from everyone else a lot if we limit ourselves. We're going to be the only ones chiming in on a particular thing, and then everyone else is going to be talking, and we're going to be silent. And it's not an effective way to engage with that process, in my opinion.

And there's experience with this, not in the recent past, but a little further back, where we had an issue that was very important to us, and we were the only ones raising it, and it didn't work. And so I think it's important for us to get engaged in this process in a way that fits into a larger framework because when you've got their back, maybe they'll have yours. That's it. And I think that would be the pragmatic reason to weigh in on things that aren't necessarily going to have a dramatic impact on us.

Well, look, I don't mind the political discussion. I'm not against, you know, I'm appreciative this is on the agenda tonight. It sounds like it may be on the agenda in a couple meetings, and, you know, I certainly don't mind. I don't mind that discussion.

I'm also not going to worry about it one bit if this vote, if we take up a resolution and vote 6-1, you know, we're fine. You know, I'm not worried about that. I suspect that the majority of Jefferson City doesn't really care what the school district of Clayton has to say on any given issue, but, you know, we can talk about that another time. My only point to bring that up is that, you know, there has been a trend, or the recent history on this has been that we have not engaged when it not clear cut and it not unanimous right And if we going to change that as a board let just be honest that we going to start to wade into political issues here You know that where this board is going to go I a little uncomfortable with that I don know how I feel about that you know and I think we should talk about that in terms of what that means for the board moving forward and board elections moving forward and what are going to be issues in board elections moving forward if we going to start to pick this stuff up Okay, so, you know, that is something we need to think about.

The last thing I'll say is, Chris, I agree with you that, you know, part of this is thinking about our role in terms of a community, you know, whether that's St. Louis County, Missouri, whatever it is. I agree with that. And that's actually where I come from times thinking about the broader community, not necessarily how I would view myself as a board member voting on do I participate in this program, whatever it is, we don't know, you know, this thing is, you know, there's been a lot of Open enrollment and efforts of various kinds going back 15, 20 years plus, ever since Matt Blunt was elected governor.

I mean, that's kind of the history here in the state. In fact, the current mayor of St. Louis proposed a unified school district when she was a state representative. You know, so like that's how long this goes back.

But I would just sort of say this board has also said we should do, we need to remain focused on what's best for kids. And so if we're going to be focused on what's best for the community, it should be what's best for the kids. Spervantage, You know, it's not a clear-cut thing to me. And so, you know, if you guys want to vote for it at the end of the day, that's fine.

It's going to be a 6-1 vote. You know, and so, and I'll say the same thing at a couple meetings when this comes up. It might not be one. It'll be at least 6-1, you know.

And so, if we want to go down that path, I think we need to think through, we need to at least be honest with ourselves about it. And no more telling people, we don't, that's political, we don't get involved in that. Yeah. Well, I think your suggestion earlier about bringing E in here is really important.

I think we need to hear from... Yeah, and I just want to kind of piggyback on what Jason said. I think there's a difference between being informed of what's in the legislature and coming down the pipe that could affect the school district and then reacting to the legislature as it comes in, as we're required to do when it becomes law, and getting involved in taking one side or the other, Spervantage, particularly when you start wading into issues that may be partisan. If a school board elected officials, we are supposed to be nonpartisan and representing kids from all walks of lives.

So that's, I think, you know, there is a, there's a little bit of an ethical dilemma there for me in terms of how far you want to get the desire for us to be involved in issues that don't directly affect our school community. So what portion of the school boards of this state do you think are taking a position on this? It's most of them, right? 35%.

Is it 35%? That's the number of districts that signed that thing divided by the number of districts that signed it. Okay. So is that, are they all involved in quasi unethical conduct?

I mean, it doesn't... No, they're not unethical. No, I'm not, I don't think I'm insinuating that anybody is involved in unethical conduct. An ethical dilemma does not mean that, I mean, I think that's a bridge too far for you to say that I'm accusing other state school boards of being involved in unethical conduct.

I think there are interests of educational institutions and interests of children that I think that this is a proposal that can be spoken to by this board that have remote impacts on us, that may not impact us next year, but impact the state educational environment, and we see as potentially having an impact on us. And I certainly think that a proposal like this potentially has a long-term impact on this district. I think it is not going to impact us next year, certainly not as written. But I don think that the overall rearrangement of no issue with what you just said Yeah Well, okay, but what I just said is if this bill presents the first step towards a rearrangement of our educational system statewide that's going to affect our families, we should take a position on it.

Well, I mean, going back to the actual issue, I don't view this necessarily as draconian is what you laid out. I mean, I understand that's your perspective, but, like, I just don't. You know, I mean, you know, and so that's sort of, you know, that's just my perspective on that particular thing. You know, that's all.

You just don't view it as the first step on that. Yeah. And look, we don't need, we're not deciding anything tonight. We're just like getting information from Dr.

Hockman and from Leo, but just inform us what's going on. Right. So this, I'm sure, will be continual discussion. On however we want to move forward.

Any other questions for Dr. Hockman? I'm going to take us way over here. So it seems like many of us or all of us agree that any sort of bill to remove or minimize property tax, personal property tax, directly impacts our community.

At the very beginning of this and what you have said in the legislative advisory, Committee is encouraging school board members to get involved and to be aware. So would you recommend that this is something that we should specifically follow and consider taking action long before it goes higher? The taxation issues? Yes.

Um, I would say it's definitely time to start doing homework on what's happening and, um, getting some expertise, experts, to explain to you what the impact of each of these could be. Um, whether it's the fiscal note that goes through that the state actually figures out what the effects are on various districts. But it's inevitable that there are going to be tax bills that will get a lot of traction. Which one's surface to the top remains to be seen.

Last year, there was really just one, possibly. They're flooded with bills now. So I would suggest I can definitely, I'm also looking for contacts. You know, Scott Kimball, who does the phone calls for the superintendents on Mondays, He and that association have experts on this, but I would begin doing the research on what each of these bills truly means for you, not my 10,000-foot level, and then just play out scenarios, and you'll decide where to go from there.

Ian will have some insights for you. Your senator will have some insights for you. Mr. Hales is just getting his feet wet.

I was going to mention this in board communication later, but it seems appropriate to mention now. On March 11th is the MSBA, Missouri School Boards Association, annual advocacy day. Chris and I went last year. It was great, actually.

We had, HICA had set up appointments with us to meet with all of our legislatures, and we asked Ian about open enrollment. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. It's a day that's just for school board members to advocate on different issues. So I'm going to add to that and say that one of the things that we've talked about at this table, and then I know Stacey and I, after we left that day of advocacy, talked a lot about is, you're right, getting involved in a political discussion like this as a board.

It is really tricky. Again, we're voted official. But what we've talked about in the past, and I'll remind us, is that we could, I don't mean to say just, but what we could do with this is to help a group of parents or concerned citizens to be the ones that actually have the ability and are supported by the board in a way that's neutral. No, you know, I'm not, this is all coming off, I don't remember our conversations exactly, but, you know, it doesn't have to be us, but we could still support it.

And I would say that that's something the advisory committee could really just start to look at. That's kind of where the advisory came from. Exactly, that's how it came to be that this existed. Community members could as a grassroots effort or an organized effort.

Right, so instead of it being the actual board on all of these issues, it would be the board supporting the community being very, you know, knowledgeable and having the information they need to do the efforts that they want to do, you know, for our district, however they feel about that, or as the bigger, you know, picture of education, et cetera. So and I would say that I would really like our committee and our board to encourage that because you know our profile of a graduate we want our kids to go out and be really great citizens right And that includes you know being well informed but it also includes allowing you know them to know how to advocate for you know whatever it is I just think we need to be the role models that say, hey, this is something that is important to our community. It's important to us that as students, we want you to be able to go, you know, do is speak up and know how to, you know, advocate for yourselves on state level, whatever it is, not just in the classroom. Right?

So, again, I just want us to continue to be involved. I understand that it's a sticky situation, but involvement is what we can exemplify as role models in any way that makes sense for us. Well, thank you, Dr. Hockman.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate your time tonight and your time otherwise helping us through this, educating us all. Thanks so much. Okay, we will move on to 7.1, which is a second reading of Policy BDC, the closed meetings, records, and votes.

So, Chris, if you would read that motion, please. I move that we approve the Policy BDC. Second. Any questions or comments?

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

Okay. Motion passes. And moving on to 8 the consent agenda Read that motion please I move that we approve consent agenda items 8 through 8 Second. Okay.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes.

Okay, board communications. I know, Leo, you have something to report out from the legislative committee. So the legislative committee met. We talked about many of the same things that Dr.

Hockman raised here. We talked about generating a set of legislative principles similar to the ones that many institutions have, could be adopted as a basis for involvement in these issues. And we talked about the process of assembling an email list to get information out regarding some of these topics. And then I have also been going to a couple PTOs and getting word out about that same email list.

That's great. Thank you. And I would say the last few years we heard randomly from parents coming to us for information on legislation and what going on So I appreciate that that in the works that you not only talking PTOs but talking about an email blast with information I think that great Any other committee meetings, Pam? Oh, equity you had today, right?

We had an equity committee meeting today, talked about two main topics. One was just reviewing the walkthroughs that have happened so far at Captain and the high school and just shared a lot of the highlights that people saw. For time, I'm going to just leave that as that, but a lot of positivity. And then the second part was reviewing the legislative issues that are ahead of us now.

Part of the, I'm going to leave it at that as well. Okay, good. Any other communication to share? Pam and Dr.

Patel and I did a walkthrough at the Family Center this morning. As I mentioned earlier, it was Pam's first time. I don't know if there's anything you wanted to share, but it's always, it is, no offense to our other schools, it is a really joyful place to be, and it was a great place to go in the morning. It's a great way to start your day, really.

Anyway, they're doing some great stuff there. Yeah, yes. It was a great way to start my day. Anyway, okay, we can motion to adjourn.

I move that the Board of Education adjourn.