December 13, 2023 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

The semifinalists next. On to the semifinalists. Rachel Chung. Alexandra Cohen.

Carter Davis. Marina Hagedorn. Okay. Hannah Moon.

Esri Perrin. Penelope Rischwadker. Kip Fitzke. Delia Zacks.

Did I miss anyone? Great. How about a big round of applause for all of our nominees? Thank you.

How about a big round of applause for Terrence? All right, you guys, we're going to give a few minutes for people to clear out and then we'll start. Spervantage, agenda, motion carried. .

Spervantage of the Education Committee Thank you. Thank you. Still on? We are?

There's an interruption. Break. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I think we can resume.

So where are we here? Mohini. I'm sorry, I skipped Dr. Patel.

I think we're going to do your superintendent communications first. Okay, no problem. Good evening, everyone. It's a great evening because we get to start off by celebrating so many of our students today.

So that always a good feeling Just a few things I do want to highlight The first thing I want to highlight is obviously I like to start off with students And today I wanted to just share with you our esports team and their success that they are having This is their second season and they made it to their second round of playoffs Their coach is actually on Jeff Pult team He one of our technicians Nick Nagel And this is actually the fastest growing sport right now in the United States It truly is. And I'm very proud of this group and just having this happen in our district because it captures some of the students that don't typically do after school activities. In fact, 45% research says 45% of current students that are student athletes that are part of eSports, this is their first time trying out for any kind of after school activity. So they've seen a lot of success.

I actually got to go up at one of their practice rounds, and they do it after school. And the amount of, like, energy that's in that room, it's amazing. So I just wanted to give them a shout out, and again, a great season for them. Next, we have some staff recognition that I'd like to have.

Deborah Clevins was one of six journalism educators to receive one of the highest honors for the journalism educators, and she just got a Pioneer Award. Elisa Overman was asked to perform at the Macy's Day Parade with over 400 band directors from across the country, and she was selected as one of them. And then, of course, Doug Verby was named the 2023 Missouri Head Coach New Hire of the Year for Class 4. And he had the first winning season since 2015 for our district.

So definitely want to recognize them. And then I also just wanted to thank the board again for having them meet the Board of Education night that we had at Starbucks a few, was it a few weeks ago I believe, I can't even remember, but yeah. But thank you for being there. We had good turnout, good dialogue, and all the feedback was we just need to have more of these events.

So thank you for being there. Board filing has started. It started on December 5th and it closes on December 26th. So I know we're We're communicating that quite a bit right now.

And then finally, if you did not know, DESE did announce they have appointed the next Commissioner of Education that will be starting their position July of 2024, Dr. Carla Eslinger. She comes to the position with about 30 years of experience in the education field. She started as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, superintendent, and all of this was, I believe, like South Carolina.

Spervantage, and the next one is Dr. Van Deven. She is currently the state senator for district 33. She will be taking on the role as of July and I believe Dr.

Van Deven is going to be helping her with the transition process. Of course, the legislative session starts in January. Recently we had the in-person PLC advocacy meeting where school Chris Wynn was there as well representing us, so thank you Chris. There was a lot of discussion on a lot of different topics including legislative advocacy, early childhood, SEL, college career readiness, etc.

And they had, board members had choice sessions so you could pick what you want to go learn about. I felt like it was a really good morning. As of Sunday, in the House, there have already been over 500 bills filed, and in the House alone, 80 of them are issues related to education. In the Senate, there's about 520 bills filed, and I believe there's around 60 of them that are related to education.

So it's definitely a lot of things happening that we just have to continue to keep an eye on, and we will continue to update the board as well about that. One of the things that came up at the PLC meeting was trying to get every school district to adopt some sort of legislative platform. And I know that we were going to have that conversation at some point as well. So that's my update right now.

I'm going to hand it off to Mohini. Hi. So basically with the high school, everyone is ready for finals and whatnot. We've seen Wellness Week in conjunction with student council themes where everyone's having a lot of fun.

People are participating with duo dogs, bracelet making, and a lot of stuff. I know a fan favorite is the music during the passing periods. A lot of people are just really excited and really ready to end off the year. And everyone at the SPSA found that if the Wellness Center because the Wellness Center helped with Wellness Week they thought that if they continue to really look at what students want and need just like this week that they sure the Wellness Center is going to be really great support for students And so, yeah, with Finals Week, a lot of students are taking advantage of all the free time they're given.

So lab time, Greyhound time, lunch, everyone's really using this to talk to teachers, get their goals in, and all that. And they've also, students have found that teachers have been really flexible with making finals ready for the students. So whether it's the timing of it or what's on it, students are really feeling like this is going to prepare them for the next semester and going forward in the class. And then also, for the last month, we've visited the elementary schoolers and the middle schoolers and asked them a lot about, you know, what's going on over there and everything they want to tell us.

And first, a really good question we asked them was what they thought it would be like to be a high schooler for a day. And they had a lot of interesting responses. My favorite one is that they really think that lunch takes out about three-fourths of the day. So they're just really excited for the lunch.

Yeah, and so they talked a lot about how they think moving on to that next step is a lot of homework, a lot of pressure. I even heard some elementary schoolers talking about college. I think it's really interesting that they have their goals in mind just from day one. And, yeah, for the captain elementary schoolers and specifically, they talked a lot about, like, the mix of the elementary schools when it comes to Y-Down and how they were really interested to see how everyone with their different personalities based on the school they came from were going to react.

But when we talked to Y-Down about it, they said actually that, you know, that transition wasn't as hard as it might seem and that, you know, Everyone actually ended up getting along really well together. Also, they discussed a lot about their relationships with their teachers. I know for Captain Whiteout, pretty much unprompted, they discussed how this year they felt like they weren't connecting with their teachers as well. Comparatively, I guess in years past, they could talk to their teachers much more and really get along with them.

But they found that this year in particular, they weren't able to foster discussions with their teachers Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, again with the chocolate milk and the recess. Yeah, I don't know. You should talk to the wide-on middle schoolers about lunch. They have a lot to say.

Good to know. Yeah, so in general, they just really enjoyed having someone to talk to about all their problems. They're not really getting that dialogue anywhere else. So we're excited to see them again in January.

Yeah. Well, thank you for doing that. It's really important, I think, that their voice is heard, too, Thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you. Okay, so we are moving to number seven, which is visitor management agreement. You just need to read the motion. I move that the Board of Education approve the agreement with Warner Communications.

Sorry about that. Obviously off my game. I move that the Board of Education approve the agreement with Warner Communications to provide Burkata guest visitor management services as presented. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? So are we going back to six? Now we're doing the consent. Okay.

Okay, go ahead, Gary. I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 8.02 through 8.06. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Any questions? Any questions on the consent? All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Now we're going to go back to six. Yeah, we're on the audit. Okay.

Good evening. In accordance with law and policy, each year our district undergoes an independent financial audit. This year it was conducted by Kerber, Echt, and Breichel. They've been our auditor for a few years.

They started a renewed contract this year for five years. And they're here to present the results of our June 30, 2023 year-end financial audit. I'd like to introduce Allison. Okay.

All right. Good evening, everyone. My name is Allison Weems, and I served as a senior audit manager for the district's financial statement audit for the year ended June 30th, 2023. Gina Cochran served as the audit partner.

She is not here this evening. So we are going to do a high level overview of the results of our audit. All right, so first, just going over a summary of our audit results for the year ended June 30th, 2023. Just as a reminder, management's responsibility is for preparing the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, also known as GAAP, and also for the Design, implementation, and maintenance of internal controls.

We did want to point out that the financial statements are prepared on two different basis of accounting. The government-wide financial statements present the financial results using the accrual basis of accounting, and the modified accrual basis of accounting is used in the fund financial statements. What that means is the main difference is the government-wide financial Financial statements present non-current assets, so things such as your property, plant, and equipment, and then non-current liabilities such as your debt on the balance sheet. Our responsibility as auditors is to provide an opinion on the fair presentation of those financial statements, and we're happy to report that we issued what's called an unmodified opinion, and what that means is we found the financial statements to be fairly presented We did perform our audit in accordance with three sets of auditing standards same as last year That includes generally accepted auditing standards government auditing standards and then the district was required to have a single audit this year due to federal expenditures exceeding And so that audit was done in accordance with the uniform guidance So in addition to auditing the financial statements we do review the internal controls of the district Our responsibility is not to provide an opinion, so we don't look at every single transaction.

We're happy to report that we had no material weaknesses in the internal controls that were noted. And then we also reviewed compliance with laws, regulations, contracts, and grants. And there was no material non-compliance noted. So that was kind of a brief overview of our financial statement audit.

In addition to the financial statement audit, we also did an audit of the federal awards in accordance with the uniform guidance. This year we audited the Education Stabilization Fund as a major program, also known as the COVID Relief Funding. We're happy to report we issued an unmodified opinion on the federal programs. And we also had no material weaknesses in internal controls that were noted.

And then no findings were required to be reported in accordance with the uniform guidance. And then lastly, we do look at certain state compliance requirements for the district. Those are performed in accordance with the examination standards in accordance with the AICPA. We issued an unmodified opinion on the state compliance portion of the district's audit.

We examined budgetary disbursement procedures as well as attendance information. And then lastly, just a few required communications to the Board of Education that we wanted to highlight for you all tonight. As part of our professional standards, over the next couple of pages, we're going to go over some of those required communications. The significant accounting policies that the district has adopted are included in Note A to the financial statements.

Again, the government-wide financial statements use the accrual basis of accounting and the modified accrual basis for the fund financial statements. It's important to note that there were no new accounting policies adopted in the current year. So when you're comparing prior year financial information, you know that the financial statements have been prepared using the same accounting policies and principles. The financial statements do include some significant estimates.

Our responsibility as auditors is to review those estimates to make sure that they're reasonable and consistent with prior years. Those estimates relate to the net pension liability and the total OPEB liability that is recorded in the government-wide financial statements. These estimates are based on actuary determined results in accordance with the applicable GASB standards. We did not find any transactions that lacked authoritative guidance or consensus.

And as part of our audit, we are required to be independent of the district, and we are in fact independent. We just have to disclose that to you all. We found the financial statement disclosures to be neutral, consistent, and clear. And then we had no difficulties encountered in performing our audit.

John and his team were very well prepared for us, so we appreciate that. Then there were no disagreements with management. And as part of our audit, there are significant risks that were required to disclose to you all. The significant risk we identified is management override of internal controls.

This risk does not mean that we found management override of internal controls. It's just a significant risk that's required to be identified in all audits. There's nothing that management or the board needs to do to act upon this risk. We're just required to disclose to you that this could happen, and we perform additional audit procedures to get comfortable with that risk.

We did not identify any material misstatements as a result of our audit, and upon approval of the financial statements, management signed what's called the management representation letter. That's where they certified to us that all the financial information is accurate and complete and that they disclosed all material information as a result of our audit. And then to our knowledge, there were no management consultations with other independent accountants regarding any complex accounting or auditing matters. And again we just like to express our sincere appreciation to the district to John to Brent and for everyone for their assistance as part of the audit And can take any questions at this time Okay.

Thank you. Questions? All right. Well, first of all, John, congratulations to you and your team for another clean audit.

Not surprised, but, you know, you guys do a great job, and we appreciate it. It's in the management discussion on page 18. There's a little talk about our AAA bond rating. And I just, that to me, I agree with your statement that this is sort of the best way to share our fiscal responsibility and the health, the financial health of the district.

So I thought maybe you could just talk a little bit so the public can hear like sort of why we have a AAA bond rating. And how we're only one of four schools that have it. One of only four schools that has it. Are there any risks to that?

How much space do we have on that? You know, all that good stuff. The AAA bond rating that we're referencing here is one of our highlights, I think. There are four schools in the state of Missouri that have this.

And so it's really based on a series of factors, but it really reflects the financial stability of this district, The stability of the community and the operations that we have here in. So we're very proud of that designation. And obviously our goal is to maintain that going forward. As far as I think, were you asking about how much leverage we have within that or?

Yeah, I mean, I know this is sort of a subjective thing and based on credit rating, you know, professionals, but, you know, I... Well, let me say this. Where does that rating come from? It comes from Standard & Poor's.

They're one of a few rating agencies. Moody's is another one, but we're typically rated by Standard & Poor's. We submit our data to them, and they rate lots of districts. We typically annually go under a rating call with them where they review our audits, ask us lots of questions about our operations to get comfortable with the rating that they're giving us.

So this is something we maintain on an ongoing basis. The one thing that's potential out of this is leverage. That's one aspect of this. With our current debt levels, we're leveraged at a very low level compared to many districts in the region, and that certainly contributes to this rating as well.

We weren't always AAA, right? We've been AAA for a long time, yes. So I just want to say the same thing. Congratulations on another clean audit.

It sounds like really there were no material findings except for the flag that you raised on the potential for personnel to override audit controls if they operate outside of the DOA is what I'm guessing. Is there an easy way within our systems, either head of IT, head of finance, in order to be able to eliminate the ability for personnel to do that? Or is that just, is it a flaw within our current accounting system? I mean, what is the, what's the issue there?

I don't think you were referring to a flaw. Right, yeah, no. I think you were referring to a general risk that all entities experience. That if an employee were to go rogue or a group of employees were to go rogue, They could potentially either manipulate the records or abscond with resources and not let the records show that.

That has not happened here. It's just their requirements are to inform you that that's a risk. Oh, okay. Yeah, so under our professional standards, that's required to be a risk in any audit.

There's no way to get around that risk. That just happened several years ago with Enron and all that stuff. Right. Okay.

So if that's just a general, like if that's just basically a general risk that's flagged, I thought that I had read it to be that we have potentially, we are following our protocols, so there wasn't any indication of that, but we could actually trigger that. But it's only triggered if you have a rogue employee, which it could happen anywhere. Yes. So, you know, our, my duty and the duty of my team is to keep the system honest.

Yeah but it not a failure or a lack of controls that we have No Okay good I have nothing else Thank you for your report and for your work and again John for the positive reflection on the financial health of the district So I have a question that a little bit more philosophical and will ask you to be probably a little bit more speculative than you normally would One of the things that I think is really important about us talking about the audit every year is that we have a lot of Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I mean, I can't think of anything specific. If they were to refer to something in the audit report that might, you know, provide additional information as a result of the financials of the district, that management discussion and analysis that that credit rating question came about.

Sperattutto, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. If anything, you know, looking at that will provide some additional resources and information about the district's financial health. So I don't think that's something that people always necessarily know the public, you know, to look at. They get, you know, they might see the huge document online and try and look and see where to even start reading.

And I would say, you know, that's a good place to short, summarize, and it provides lots of good information about the district. Thank you. I think that's helpful. And again, Paz asked for kind of an oddball question, but I think that's helpful for people to understand.

I would add to that. In her presentation, there was a lot of words that may not mean things to people. But one of the things that I think people should understand is that there's independence in her work versus our work. We're not in collusion.

She's inspecting our work and reporting to you as management about our work. So I think, you know, if people understand that, it's not that we're in. It's the whole purpose of an audit. Exactly.

Yes, the whole purpose of an audit is an independent opinion on the health of the district's finances. Thank you. John? I just have a quick question since we're talking about our finances.

So we, you know, a few years ago we passed Prop E, and I'm just, will you remind the district or the board and the community where we are currently with our fund balance and how, when you think, I mean, I know that the one before, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Are there any more questions?

Okay. Well, thank you for being here tonight. We appreciate the honor. There is a motion on the floor that we would ask what you're doing with that motion is acknowledging receipt of this so that we complete the cycle of this delivery, and then we can pass that along to DESE to make sure that we're in compliance with their rules.

Any questions? Yep. I move that the Board of Education acknowledge and accept the reports from the table that are done for the LHC, providing the financial audit and the Federal Estate Program report as it's been moved in the last year of the session. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

All right, it passes. And we've done our consent. So I think we are on to board safety and security. That works.

All right, well, good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to be able to give the board an update on safety and security. We are in the process of completing now a safety and security audit with Tier 1, which I'll speak to here in just a moment. But we'll continue to provide the board some updates in these areas.

This is a very extensive audit with lots of data that is coming back that we'll be continuing to work with both the buildings, our safety and security committee, to really dive deep and analyze and then produce a full plan that will be taking place over the next couple of years to try and address some of the things that we, some of the findings that we found in the audit itself. So why the audit? This was a perfect opportunity to really just, with an outside entity of experts in the field, to go through and do an examination of physical security and procedures and policies and everything they're in. And so this was a, we were starting this process in early July, looking at the emergency operations plan, and then moving on at the start of school, we were working with Tier 1.

And Tier 1 is a group of law enforcement professionals, emergency service professionals that actually specialize in this area of school safety, do trainings for schools all across, I would say, you know, all across the area and much farther. And so they've really been great at kind of coming in with a, you know, a look of our facilities, of our processes, and to give us really a good plan moving forward on some of the things that we need to address. And so this evening I'd like to introduce the Chief of Police for Ellisville. He is also our representative here from Tier 1 that did all of the auditing here at Clayton.

And he's going to introduce himself and then go over a little bit on some of the broad findings. How's everybody doing this evening? Good. First of all, thank you for having me here.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. In March, I will be traveling to Washington, D.C., where I will be advising the White House, working with senior FBI officials on active shooter protocols for the nation. It's something that at least clarifies for you that what I'm doing and what I say has a little bit of validity to it. I told everybody I talked to, I'm not an expert.

Why am I not an expert? Because while I have a lot of training and background, I don't know the Clayton School District. I didn't know it inside and out. Now I do.

Thanks, Luke. I did not know what inside and out before I came here to do this system and report So what I did was I took next slide if you don mind There we go I took time several months and I did a lot of things to look into the school district to verify to find areas of growth and to identify places where we can help and assist in the area of provision of safety and security The report was over 200 pages, the final document. However, I wanted to make sure that I stated in a public forum, this report is not available to the public. It's statutorily protected, so you as a board will see parts of it.

You'll see the report. However, the public cannot access this report. And the reason is because we're calling attention to safety and security areas of growth that could potentially pose threats to our students and our staff. So I just want to, I like to say that publicly so the public understands while you're doing due diligence, I do have a background in this.

We don't share this report with anyone. So what did we do? Number one, I started by looking at your emergency operations plans, your crisis team documentation. And then we came up with, Luke and I came up with a quick guide.

One of the biggest things we can do for our students and staff is to provide them information, what they need to do in an emergency. We all know speed saves lives. I'm happy to say, and I will take this time to give a little kudos right now to Luke. Anything I saw, he worked on.

He jumped on quickly. His safety guide that he, I gave him the information that he put together and put in the classrooms, it's one of the finest I've ever seen. I'm actually stealing it back from Luke, and I'm going to use it going forward anytime I do any consulting with schools or areas that I see some application. Then the biggest part, or I feel one of the biggest parts of what I do is I interview staff, faculty, parents, students, community members.

I worked with the police department. And I'd be remiss if I didn't note, Chief Smith is in the room with us. The relationship and the ability of your district to work with those members is incredible. That's what I found during these interviews.

But the biggest reason I do those interviews, I said, I'm not an expert. I don't know what goes on day to day in your school district. These people do. I literally interviewed over 100 people specifically about safety and security for the district.

Then my final piece of the puzzle is I actually took physical security surveys of every building in your district. I walked every building, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of steps we put on our little Fitbits, checking every aspect of your school district, building safety, check locks, doors, windows, access control. I'm glad to hear, I want to kudos to the district. One of the areas that you just passed tonight was one of the areas of growth that I noted as it relates to providing security and safety for your students and staff.

It's so important to control access. So what you passed, again, I applaud that. So that all together presents a complete holistic view of your school district safety and security. Next slide.

Spervantage, Pursuit, and Pursuit. Hundreds of schools. And I kept telling Luke, I would tell you that your district is one of the best I've ever dealt with. And that's, you're not, you already paid me, so I don't have to tell you that.

But legitimately, the care, the concern, the continual areas that I saw was just that, the staff, the community, and their support for the efforts that you do. And obviously, it's top down. And Dr. Patel and Luke and everybody I dealt with throughout their staff, I could see it was pervasive throughout the community.

Safety and security is important. Areas of growth. Do we have the next slide? Yeah, we can do it.

Okay So areas of growth A couple things that I came up with There was the continued review of your intruder alert system That was an area that we saw some potential for growth in Your visitor management upgrade which you guys tonight took care of which I love The center of Clayton and its adjacent nature to the high school provided some areas of growth And then communication in general during emergencies. I think I was brought in as a result of an incident that occurred last year. One of the things I wanted to highlight was that incident, while it was unfortunate, And it really was, you know, a couple of errors that made it come about. It really shone a light on the ability of the police department, your staff, and your students to respond in an emergency.

We hate to see accidents occur like that, that panic people and create, you know, some concerns within the community. But what I like to see as an assessor, something that comes in is what happened as a result of that. And I can tell you unequivocally, the response was excellent. Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

As a roadmap to identify those areas, reassess those areas, and then improve upon those areas, you're going to be in a great place. So as far as I'm concerned, that's all I have. Yeah. Yeah, and just as far as our next steps will be, and I alluded to it earlier, we're going to spend some time with the buildings because each portion of the port was broken down to site.

And so we will spend some time working and prioritizing with them some of the areas, some of the feedback we got from the buildings, working with the Safety and Security Committee, moving forward, starting up in January. Now that we have this data, I believe that we're going to have a chance probably to inform you a little bit more in detail coming up here at a soon opportunity with the board. So you'll hear a lot more about the details of the report itself. Even though we couldn't share it in public tonight, you will be briefed in that information as well.

So again, yes, some of the things that we, our next steps we know will be security cameras, continued review of that alert system. When I say alert system, just so everybody's aware, those are the buttons on the wall that actually ignite a intruder alert. So, and then we'll be doing some other things in communications as well to really try and make our response even better. We have growth, and so we're going to respond to that and try and grow some of those areas.

So, with that said, any questions? No, that was a lot. So, first, thank you for the report and the time that you spent in our districts, and thank you for the Clayton Police Department for all the support that you and the officers assigned to our school districts provide Thank you, Dr. Bord.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I have every building's roadmap of what I said. So the reassessment is, what did you do? Well, I just told you, I got to give you time to do some stuff.

There are some things that I'm going to call critical areas, but most of them, and I got to give Luke a lot of credit. So, Luke went through and did almost every walkthrough with me. He was with me the entire time. We spent hours and hours in every building.

And when he saw stuff, and this was a little frustrating for me because I want you guys to say I did something positive, right? But when he saw something like doors that weren't closing or windows left open or even some technical stuff, some inability to access cameras, etc., he immediately went back and fixed those things. So now we left with some larger projects And so I don want to put the district in a bad light because and I mean this with all my heart you guys are doing almost everything absolutely correctly Like I feel if my children by the way I have friends with the FBI friends in law enforcement their kids go to this district I talk to all of them And they all said the same thing It's locked tight, Steve. It's really good.

So from a perspective of legitimacy of the report, I would say every two to three years, I would like to see a lesser survey. So not the level that we did, but at least every couple, three years, let's come back and see what have we accomplished. And where are some new areas of growth potentially? And that is my typical recommendation.

There are other places I tell them I need to be back here in six months. If you had issues, I would tell you I need to be back in six months. I will share anecdotally, I work with a lot of clients at a major university. And they have blue lights that are intended for emergent situations.

When I did my survey, their blue lights didn't work. They hadn't worked for six months. The liability to that school, the danger to the students, et cetera. So I told them, I will be back.

These better be fixed now. You didn't have any of those kinds of issues. There's a couple areas that I'm sure Dr. Patel and Luke will talk to you about that are more prevalent that I don't love, probably could be addressed.

But in general, you just didn't have any of those. It was amazing. It really was. I have a question.

Do we have any of those flock cameras around? We do. Yes, the police department actually does. We've looked into them as a district, had conversations with the police department on what that looks like.

And just to clarify for everybody what a flock camera is, they basically, and Chief can chime in if I leave something out. I'll chime in, actually. Okay. I'm a flock expert.

I'm a flock expert. So Flocker license plate reader cameras, and what they do is they continually read. They don't look at the people in the vehicle, but they notify local law enforcement via text, via computer alert, that there is a felon, a stolen vehicle, et cetera. We are big fans of the Flock cameras.

I did make a recommendation specifically at the high schools that relates to Flock cameras. I believe, and Mark, you can concur, the city of Clayton is well situated in the Flock camera area. Yeah, if you don't mind. If you guys don't mind.

Yeah. I'll let you go. Okay. Well, I got my jacket.

Too much stuff on. Good evening, and thanks for having me here. Yes, we have flock cameras throughout the city. Our strategy for the city of Clayton is to have flock cameras at our main access points, our main thoroughfares, like Hanley, Big Bend, Clayton Road.

And then we have some organizations within our community, mainly neighborhood associations, higher education associations, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And so we are having, we have one off Wydown, near Wydown Middle School. We have one that's going into Ladue, so, you know, close to the high school. But like I said, the strategy for the city is to have them in our entry points, our access points to Clayton.

But we don't have any, like, okay. Yeah, now it's part of the district. Should we? Did you have a question?

No, I'm good. Do we have them? Well, yes. How's that?

But I would do it judiciously. So here's the beauty of flock cameras, and not to step on Chief's toes, but the beauty of flock cameras are if you position them tactically, as long as you get an alert, you don't need them in every school. Please don't get them in every school. But there are certain areas where you can work with the police department where there's probably a couple schools, and not a lot, By the way, I don't want them to sell you on a lot of cameras.

There are a couple pivotal tactical points that absolutely I think, and I did recommend in the report that you should have them. I think the high school was one just to see who's coming and going. So we know who's in our area, who's here. We see a stolen car show up in that area.

We know our officers, your officers, are there watching what's going on, making contact with that person before they get to an area where they can do something that's a little bit more nefarious. So, yes, you should have them, but not to the extent that it's going to be onerous on the district at all. I think with what we already have mapped out, our cameras, we can work in conjunction, so it probably wouldn't be a whole lot of cameras that's needed. All right.

More questions? So the only other wondering I have is, I mean, I think everybody here is aware and everybody who might be watching our meetings are aware that we are a well-resourced and funded school district. And I don't think that safety and security should be limited to well-resourced and funded school districts. So are there, is there like a top 10 things that we're doing that Nisa as a superintendent could share through like the superintendent working group that she's with that we're doing that we should, we can share with other school districts that's not, you know, going to compromise the security of the overall report?

If that's the case, maybe you and Luke could make some recommendations and package that up for Nisha, because I think it would be a good idea to share those broader with the St. Louis County school communities who, again, you know, I mean, we will have you back in two to three years, but some of those other school districts may not have the resources to even have you in for the first time. And so if there is low-hanging fruit that we can share with others, I just think that we should be doing it. And I would tell you one of the things that's probably best shared is cultural.

And that is truly the message in the report. And you'll see that it really is a cultural desire to provide. And it's not monetary, by the way. It truly is your staff.

It's how you hire, how you train. But there are definitely some physical security things that are in the report that absolutely would be able to be shared that are just great tips and great techniques to providing security and safety for your students. Two questions. The five-year plan that we're working on, will there be – I mean, this kind of goes along with when we were hiring you again, I think.

What will be the sort of oversight on that in terms of whether that is happening or being evaluated, how we're being evaluated against that plan? Do you have an idea of that or how that's designed to work? Just as far as just the evaluation of what we're accomplishing at the time. Yeah, once you have the five-year plan, how do you?

Yeah, well, one thing I have learned is we've created a great relationship with Chief Lewis here. And so we will continue to probably be in contact in a smaller fashion on a lot of these items. They are the authority in a lot of K-12 environments, and so we would be remiss not to take advantage of their ability to kind of just speak into some of those situations. So we will utilize that quite a bit.

And then obviously, I think, you know, in speaking to some of the cultural things that we've kind of seen pervasively throughout the district is that we all, especially as a district, want to see this get better. And when I say that we're going to work with the buildings, the buildings want to see these things happen because it does. It benefits, you know, a safe school environment for our kids and then our staff and our community in general. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I probably have to be a little bit more of a, you know, make a statement for a question to give the context to this, but you mentioned the intruder alert system and the incident that we had at Y-Down, obviously, that we all know about. While I certainly agree that it's a kind of emergency and that it was a, you know, sort of a false alarm that we learned a lot, we learned a lot of good things, I don't want to overlook the fact that it did cause a lot of trauma and damage, and part of our responsibility in the area of safety and security is to make sure that doesn't happen either. So we want to acknowledge that, what the value of that was. So that's the statement part.

Here's the question part. In your review so far of our intruder alert system, are there problems, and I don't want you to tell me what they are, if there are. Are there problems that you've identified that contributed to that that we have not yet been able to fix? No, I wouldn't say not yet been able to fix.

So, yes, there were problems that contributed to that. Number one, communication. And that really, I hate to use this term, but it was a comedy of errors, okay? There was a lot of things that didn't happen that should have.

And I talked to Doc and Luke about that I mean I don foresee that happening again here You are super sensitive can I use that word to those kinds of issues right And so I don't see a repeat of that because of fail-safes that have been put in. I can't go near a blue button, so my job is to test these things, right? You see me go near a blue button, Luke's tackling me going, we can never have another instance like that occurring, right? So I don't see that ever happening again.

Were there areas of growth that I identified related to that that I made recommendations? Absolutely. You know, I spent two days at Y-Down talking, and there were, I won't sugarcoat the potential trauma to some of the staff, right? And when you think about it from those perspectives, people hate this and it's a horrible thing.

But when you think about having to save your kids' lives, it brings a stark reality to it that people get emotional over. And I had people talk, people were open and honest with me. I didn't put any, a hundred people I interviewed, no one's names in the report, no one's titles in the report. I have a way of getting people to open to me about those things and they shared with me that.

The good part about this, and one thing that I think you guys should share with other districts, is crow about this report, what your response was. The district, and I note this, you have a very strong culture of safety and security. You also have a high sensitivity that isn't really correlated to the level of threat. And I don't know if I say that right, but I mean, I see it with kids, it's palpable.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. That's just my belief. And in your district, one thing that I did note in a couple places is this super hypersensitivity to a threat that doesn't exist. And that comes from an overriding fear, right?

We can oversecure things. And so I think in this report we did a really good, I feel like we did a good happy medium of, okay, these are the things we need to address, but the things like that, we just won't let them happen again. They're not going to happen again. So now two, three years we can desensitize to those and start talking about the things that we need to worry about, not the things that the boogeyman, you know, active shooter in the corner that really doesn't exist.

If that answers your question. No, thank you for that. Okay, perfect. Appreciate it.

Sir? I don't think I have any questions. Okay. Yeah, I don't think I have any questions.

I just noticed the green light. I'm sorry. No, I had that on the whole time. I mean, I was like, you know, I'm going to ask a question.

But since you asked me to ask a question. So you're saying that, explain the boogeyman thing again. Okay. I got it right.

Yeah, so in my interviews with people, and it was, keep in mind, I talked to parents, I talked to community members, I talked to the SROs, the police department, and then I talked to staff, and then I talked to students when it was approved by the principals. And the sense I got, and it was pervasive, right? There are some elementary school kids in your district who, when there's any sense of a threat, they overreact for their age and for their exposure to violence, if that makes sense. In other words, they're really afraid of an active shooter, and they shouldn't be at that level.

And so what I noticed that night, and your SROs, by the way, are phenomenal. What do you mean they shouldn't be at that level, though? When you're a third grader in Clayton, okay, where you don't hear gunfire every night, and you don't have violent crime happening all the time, you shouldn't be super sensitive to the idea that you're going to be the victim of violent crime. Or you're going to be, I don't know if that's a social, It could be social exposure.

My sense was in my interviews I got was that it's maybe an overwhelming sense of response by some of the staff members to potential stimuli that could revolve around violent crime, that could revolve around an active shooter. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Super sensitivity to active shooter incidents And I never say this because everyone there a potential everywhere right You one of the safest communities in the region You have one of the best police departments And by the way I have a police department but I saying it about your police department You have one of the best police departments in the region You have school resource officers You have trained staff and an administration through and through that to their core concerned about safety and security That's great, and that does everything. That should suffice for the kids. And I don't know, I think it's something that we need to suss out and look at.

Why is there a supersensitivity to this issue? Wouldn't that be because there's several gun school shootings like Nashville last year? Social media, absolutely. It seems like it's a little bit more pervasive here.

And I think it's messaging is what it is. I think it's a sense of that community messaging where maybe we need to crow about. In my opinion, I don't think you guys quite do enough talking about how really secure you are, right? You guys are doing a phenomenal job.

You are this district. Your relationship with the police department, your relationship with your community is amazing. I don't think we talk about that enough. And I think it's a generation, you know, it's going to take time, but I think every time you do stuff like this, you talk to your students and staff and say, we got, that guy was absolutely ebullient over how great we are at providing safety and security for you guys.

Just one question. So until like the last incident that happened here, right, which was an unfortunate incident. However, it could have been an incident, right? And we were not as secure, correct?

If I'm wrong. Actually, I would say you were actually as secure as any school that I mean. I mean, but like the communication. Right.

There was quasi failures in some of the communication. So it's just until it happens. There's no true demographic, or I don't know the data, but it seems like based on my studies, my anthropological studies on TV every night, that it seems like it's happening in all these different economic classes of communities. There's no one specific community that gets more action, more activity than another.

I will tell you this, and I'm the wrong guy for this because I am a national fellow and active shooter, so I do statistically keep track of. I will give you one statistic that's important for people to understand. To date, and this is the FBI statistical studies, to date in the last 24 years, there have been roughly 3,200 casualties in active shooters. The entire nation, every school, every building, every business, every defined active shooter.

Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Our children are our most precious thing. And so when we hear about Uvalde and we hear about Sandy Hook, we immediately go to our beautiful young children in our elementary schools and we immediately become concerned without realizing that the truth is there were more shootings in, I'll pick the city of St. Louis, in the same time frame than in all the years of school shootings.

And that's kind of my message. We have to get away from scaring our kids. They're much more likely to be killed in violent crime in certain areas than they are of a school shooting. Two school shootings.

Two mass shootings in elementary schools in the history of our elementary schools. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried And we can make our kids statistics but when you do that math if you really sit down and do it and you can take away the emotion you can say probably more likely to be in a plane crash and killed than killed as a result of an active shooter in elementary school When you put that lens on, and then you return to the talk about safety and security, add to that, your elementary schools are locked down. You have some principals out there, I'm just going to tell you, they care about your kids' safety and security. When you add all that into the mix, I revert to, you guys have an amazingly safe school district, and I would love to see that messaging go out to your staff, to your community, that they understand a guy came in, wrote a 200-page document, and his ultimate takeaway was, you guys are doing almost everything right, and here's some areas of growth that I'd love to see you work on.

And then you may rethink whether you continue to have active shooter training for elementary school students going forward. I think we really have to balance being prepared with traumatizing our kids. And I think the mental health crisis we're just having with our kids in general, we don't want to be responsible for adding to that. Right?

Because now we're making plans in other areas of the district to deal with that, you know, for other reasons. So I just, I really appreciate you bringing up that point, and I think the district should rethink and talk about, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I don't think people parse out whether or not it's more safer in grade school versus junior high versus high school. We're just thinking if you're a parent and you got a kid who's a freshman in high school, one in junior high, and one in grade school, and your high school gets shot up, everyone in the house is impacted, right? So we're not really thinking about like it's less likely to happen here. But I do think, I mean, I'm just saying the other side of the coin is that it's also good to prepare these kids for what could happen.

So the litmus test, and I apologize, so the litmus test is two things. Number one, I have a company that sells you training for your kids, and I'm telling you I wouldn't do it. Number two, the beauty is, though, and this is what's most important, I leave here. I don't have a connection with the Clayton School District.

I give you information. It's cultural. You may be right. I mean, you may decide as a group this is what we're going to do at this level.

I would tell you absolutely the adults need to be trained, 100 percent, absolutely. Whether you train your second, third, fourth graders, that's going to be a Clayton School Board decision. You can read my report and get my input, but ultimately the decision is yours, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Elementary school students, the cost is potentially some mental health, you know, levels of mental health, you know, it's just something we're going to have to grapple with over the coming months.

That's all. I have two other questions, but just to end on that thought is, you know, we didn't know. Once, you know, school shootings started to be more in the press, et cetera, et cetera, we did what we felt was right at the time, which was to do active shooter, you know, training for our students in elementary school. And just like with everything else now, we know maybe that's not the right thing to do.

So I just want to, I don't want to look at this and think, oh gosh, we caused this big problem. Now that we see that our kids are having this because we've done this great audit, then we can say, okay, now what do we want to do? What's our actions going forward? So just to sort of wrap up on that, because I think it is a good point.

And I think as our, you know, we've seen with Nisha from time one, we are always willing to grow and change according to what the data shows and according to what we're seeing with our students and with our staff. So one of the questions I had was, is there a way, just related to this exact thing, do we have, it's more for Luke, but maybe you have experience with this too, but is there a way for us to track the experience of safety and security, not just their perception of it, but actual, you know, their feeling that they actually have a mastery of what to do from, you know, time A, so the time this audit was done, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. It makes sense to keep track of, oh, and how do people feel now? How do the students feel now?

What's going on with the staff now? Do they feel better than they did, you know, in 2023? Yeah, and we can absolutely do that with surveys and being able to keep track of some of that data as we move forward and, you know, move into this next season. You know, I think it's important to understand we've got work to do still.

Like, you know, the areas of growth are still there, and so we've still got work to do. And being able to kind of tell where we're at would be a good way of providing some data. Because if we're going to change some of our messaging and do a lot, I think that's such a good point. Because I do have parents, you know, when I say I'm concerned about safety and security, and then they say, and Clayton, right?

And that's a valid point. It is absolutely valid. It's also valid for me to say, yep, right? So it's a tricky thing.

And I just want us to recognize, you know, it really makes sense for us to track, you know, how that's going for our students and staff over time. Given the things, the occurrences that happen all year long, every, you know, there's going to be more, you know, incidences in the nation. You know what I'm saying? So I just appreciate us thinking about how to track that for our staff and look at, you know, after this audit specifically going forward Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. If there is another incident within our district, whether it's an accidental or some sort of true security incident, do we have an actual protocol in place, specific protocol in place, not for what happens the day of, because I know that's obviously all been very much worked through and is a given. But what is is there a protocol or does there need to be even a protocol for what happens in the months following that in terms of you know here what happened in this case is we immediately said oh we need tier one So is there did we learn from this you know well are we going to call tier one back Is there a difference Is there a different thing that we need to do to really assess what happened In this case you know it worked out that we had but what if it happens next year Will we hire tier one again I just want us to sort of think proactively Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you so much.

Mohini, what do you think? Well, one thing for the high school is we have an open campus. And so is there like a tradeoff between having all the safety and security stuff and also like our freedom? I'm a security guy.

Can I talk about the open campus? Okay. Great question, by the way. I recommend, so we talked about culture, Clayton School District culture.

I talked to people who went to high school here 25 years ago. Love open campuses. I'm a security guy. I don't love open campuses.

I recommend that we move away from the total open campus concept because of the threat it presents. However, we have to take into account culture, true threat analysis, right, what the danger is to us, and then reassess as a body, as you guys, to say, okay, he recommended this. Is there somewhere in the middle that we can come to a logical, maybe only upperclassmen do open campus, right? What year are you?

All right, perfect. So, one of my disconnects with the open campus theory is this. Somebody goes from eighth grade to a freshman year, they don't have the responsibility, think about when you were a freshman, that level of understanding, that level of savvy to allow them to leave campus when they want. I heard you talk about what your passing period called?

Greyhound. I'm not a dog racing fan. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Colleges are open campuses.

Seniors getting ready for college, it makes perfect sense. Juniors, sure. Freshmen and sophomores, I'm not quite as in love with it. I would tell you that you also see ancillary issues in the surrounding area as a result of students en masse being allowed to leave a campus that's secure and safe.

But again, read my report. Thank you. Great question, by the way. You hit on one of my biggies.

Okay. That was great. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Should we invite him for drinks? At the Best Western, where are we going? Where are we going?

Hampton Inn. No, Hampton Inn. Sorry. Sorry.

I knew it was a hotel. Okay. All right We on the board communications So hold on a second here Jason Wilson what happened in the equity committee Turn on your mic. Thank you.

I think I want to attend the walkthrough too. And that's it really. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. Gary left us, I think. So that was Parks and Rec. He'll do that next time.

Chris, SSD, Governing Council, and Wellness. And then I'll say, too, just for the public that's watching, because we were talking about safety and security, that I'll also be on, starting in January, the Safety and Security Committee. So we will have a board member on that committee as well. And I'm so glad that that committee is now fully formed.

You have a lot of committees. That's okay. We appreciate it. I really enjoy it.

So, yeah, thanks. You're welcome. Okay, SSD Governing Council. It was a great meeting.

Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality. A lot of great advice about staff and how SSD staff can be a part of helping families feel like they are getting the services they need and, you know, just really advocating for the students' needs to be met and how parents can be involved in that. So that was great to hear. They also reviewed SSD's strategic plan and CSIP, so we got to hear about the things that they've been working on, the changes.

And I was really happy to hear that, you know, we've had these forums this year about, you know, with parents about, you know, what they're seeing in our district specifically. And I was actually able to hear a lot in this governing council meeting about, you know, ways that we could utilize some stuff that's already out there to really help our district. SSD folks, there's a great, you know, wealth of knowledge there. And so with some of the things that I was hearing about, you know, their strategic plan, et cetera, I was able to contact Robin and sort of talk about, hey, have we talked about, have you reached this person?

S.S.D., have you been able to get this kind of information? I just think that our partnership is going to continue to grow, and I think that that's going to be fabulous and help our students and then help our families feel really good about us improving. That's all for that. S.E.L.

and Wellness Committee, I could go on for five hours because this is my favorite thing to talk about, But we just had another meeting, and again, there is so much good stuff going on with health and wellness in our district. I couldn't be more proud and impressed. So many updates from so many people, but a couple that I want to highlight is that we do a really good job, and I'm very happy, and John was there to discuss this, but we do a great job of making sure our staff also really has access to health and wellness and has great benefits. So I want to make sure that we highlight that, and I'm really proud of that as a district.

The other thing I want to highlight is our all-in-Clayton coalition, grant-funded coalition that addresses substance use and awareness, is doing unbelievably fabulous things. I wish they had a little more understanding from the general public, but I want to make sure everyone in this room knows that we have – Lily is an incredible leader and has made vast strides in our ability to reach students and parents around these issues We have students two student groups that are huge one in the high school and one in the middle school who are, the students have a voice, and they look at the same data that we look at as a district. You know, there's a survey every year, and they look at the same data and say, okay, this is what we want to address in our schools, and this is how we want to do it. And I just, it's fantastic, because then we end up getting peer-to-peer education, Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality.

And how everyone is feeling so excited about that starting and how it feels, how Jin has been doing such a fabulous job of really integrating into the high school and helping out with things like Wellness Week. She's also been, you know, collaborating with All In. And of course, that's a perfect, you know, collaboration as well as just the other counselors in general. So I just think there's a lot of momentum there that feels really exciting and is going to be really helpful for our students' mental health.

And we also happen to have been able to have Jessica come in, Jessica Colvin, who did, and she had some great, fabulous ideas and thoughts. So I just want to put a shout out to all of us for saying yes to making sure that we hired her and that she came in because she's been a crucial force in helping make some changes that I can already tell are going to make a big difference for our culture and for our students. So I think that's it. Okay.

Thank you. Anybody else have anything? I just, because Chris mentioned the Wellness Center, I just wanted to say, Jason and Chris and I were on a walkthrough of the high school and we got to see the space and it's coming along, like, it's built out. The wall, you know, it's drywalled and there's individual space for privacy, there's a big area for maybe group, you know, work and it was exciting to really see it taking shape.

So that was great. And something else I wanted to highlight that we saw on the high school walkthrough as we went to the Exploratorium classroom, which is our gifted education. And the reason I wanted to highlight it is it's one of those things that is special to Clayton. And the teacher, Mr.

Chris Holmes, is excellent. And he has these kids working on really incredible, impressive passion projects that they kind of get to explore deeper anything they want. And he connects them with professionals in the area to do research. And it's a year-long project.

And anyway, it's really cool. So if you have the opportunity to go on a walkthrough and visit that class, I highly recommend it. It's, like I said, one of those things that is only at Clayton and really makes us shine. And he does a great job of working with learners of, you know, all different types of learners within that program and lets them work how they work best.

So I was really impressed with that. I felt like there was something else. Probably other walkthroughs we went on. I don't remember.

That was it. Go on a walkthrough if you get a chance. They're always fun. Okay.

There has, real quick, there's been a Clayton Education Foundation meeting since we last met in this venue, and so happy to report on that. So Tyler Hogan is the new president of the foundation, and Allie Rossini stepped up to be vice president. So I think we have some good people that have sort of taken the torch, so to speak, and trying to come up with some new ideas, trying to restructure some things. So obviously a lot more to come on that, but I think we have good people carrying on.

Okay. Are we good? We ready to wrap up? Okay.

Well, yeah, go ahead. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. Okay. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes.