September 28, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

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

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Are we ready? All right. Added to our notices, we give it, and we are going to go ahead and start. Start.

We're starting. Thank you. All right, let's go ahead and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Good to see everybody tonight.

I think we are going to start with the approval of the September 28th agenda Yes I move that the Board of Education approve the business meeting agenda for September 28th 2022 Second I move to second it Questions or comments All in favor Aye Any opposed Great Motion passes And now we are on to recognizing our own. I'll turn that over to Dr. Patel. Okay, and just a quick note, we don't have those individual mics still in, so our mics are right here for you to speak up a little when we're up here.

So today we're very excited to recognize one of our very own superstar students. So if you could come up here, Felix, Mason, you can come up as well, and then the parents. We would love to recognize you. We've got two chairs up here.

So Felix, you can sit up there with Mason in one of those chairs. That would be amazing. So everyone, Felix, and likes to go by Fifi, is actually a first grader at Captain Elementary School. And right before the pandemic, he decided to grow his hair.

And it grew almost 12 inches, and then he cut it off and donated it to make wigs for anyone who needs those. And I think I heard he may start growing out his hair again. Felix, we wanted to have you here today and recognize you. And I'm so glad your older brother, Mason, is here as well.

He's a third grader and captain. And I hear he's not as shy as Felix is sometimes. So we just wanted to let you know how proud we are of you. And I think we may even have, yep, we've got some pictures up there of Fifi, Felix, and all his hair.

See how long it was? But we just, we always talk about in our school district how we want our kids to leave us with these competencies, right? And one of the competencies is being self-actualized, which is truly knowing your purpose, being happy, being a humanitarian. And Felix, as a first grader, is modeling that for us and our students.

So parents, we really want to thank you for raising such amazing children. And Fifi, we want to tell you how proud we are of you. So thank you. And is there anything Mason?

Or, Fifi, what you would like to say? I know you like ice cream. Do you like ice cream? Did I hear you like ice cream?

Does he? He does. Anything you want to say? I like to read history books, and I like to read about George Washington, and I've read about the Battle of Gettysburg and other battles.

Very good. See, that is so impressive. . .

At home he told me if he's being shy today. He has two things he wants to share. One is when he started to grow his hair and he found out like chip clips are really useful. .

We're going to cover his eyes and he was like, oh, I don't want those hairpins. So we use this. And if one doesn't work, two work. And also he always bring this ruler, which he brought today.

It's like how long he has to grow to donate. So everyone, if like longer than this, like there's opportunity to donate. Yes, so cute. How did he decide to do that?

Was there something he just wanted to? How did he get that idea? We watched some video and there's our kids with cancer. So he asked a few questions like why they don't have hair.

So we went through a little bit about chemotherapy and things like that. Things like that. And he said, oh, since we are, because there was lockdown during that time. And he was like, since we couldn't go to the salon, how about let's grow our hair?

So he started it, and I go with him. And yeah. So he had his bus card that day, and he was like, mom, why didn't you do a bus card with me? I was expecting I donated more.

So maybe I will try bus card next year. Wow Well thank you for being here and thank you Phoebe for being a great role model for all of us We really appreciate it We so proud of you Thank you Thank you. Harder, who might take your phone? Yeah, they just, yeah.

Two more years. All right, well thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mason, too.

And we are now on to superintendent communications. Okay. So quite a few things now that school started back up that are going on that I do want to highlight. One of the things, and I do have, yeah, Christopher just forwarded it to the slides.

One announcement we recently made was Clayton High School National Merit Semifinalists. So we had 15 students achieve this honor, and less than 1% of students in the United States actually get this. So we had 15 at the high school, the senior level do that, and that represents about 7% of the graduating class. So we think that's a great honor, and we'll be bringing them later on this semester at the board meeting to recognize each of them individually.

So I wanted to make sure we highlight that. Another great thing that happened was the 6th grade camp occurred this year. It has not occurred since 2019, and it's a longstanding tradition. Sixth graders were excited.

We had camp counselors there. I know when the buses came in and the kids got all loaded up, there was just this level of excitement. They were so happy to be actually able to go and experience that. So they returned with lots and lots of stories in good time.

So that occurred. And then right now we have the Food and Essentials Drive still occurring. So there's still time to donate. But that is sponsored by the Clayton Education Foundation, the PTO Council, and we partnered with the Clayton Police Department this year as well.

So I believe over $5,800 have been raised in hundreds and hundreds of pounds of essentials. So please note that there's still time to donate, so we're going to keep that going for a few more weeks, I believe. And then a few other things that I wanted to highlight. Our Clayton High School swim team actually got together and they raised money for cancer awareness as well.

And they raised over, I believe, over $3,000 for that. And they participated in the St. Louis Swim Across America event. And they, you know, again, just showing, giving back to the community.

And that's through our athletics. We started a new series called the Clayton Experience. If you have not seen it, we released our first video and it was with Dr. Murdoch.

And basically, I've always said it's people, not programs, that make a school district great. So this is like a series where we're going to do a video once a month with community members, staff, students, actually, and just talk about what it means to have the Clayton experience and just their story and their journey. So tune into that. And then finally, Erica Whitfield just got recognized by a Titus II Foundation with an Educator Impact Award.

Erica is a phenomenal teacher at Clayton High School, and she is truly, if you see her teaching and just how she interacts with the students, and even how she leads some of the professional development she does. She works with Cameron closely, all the equity work, and she's just one of our rising superstars. So it was very nice to see that she was recognized for her excellence, like just her productivity and everything she does. So I just wanted to make sure we highlight her as well.

And then today, just more news coming along. NISH released their rankings for the school districts, and the school district of Clayton last year was ranked 17th in the nation, and this year it is 13th. Moved up four spaces, four spots. We are also the best school district in the state, best place to teach with the best teachers.

So here's a quick little video clip of just like some of the... That's not loaded. That cannot be loaded. So we will be sharing all that information with the community as well.

But also our schools ranked out. We had the best middle school in the state, and then our elementary schools came in second, third, and fourth in the state as well. So just lots of great news. It's really good.

Yep. And so with that, I want to hand it off to Carter. All right. So last time, I talked a little bit about the schedule.

We have a little bit, like, now that we're deeper into the school year, we know a little bit more about that. And teachers have started sort of, like, adapting to the schedule almost. So I feel like it's been a lot better, and those 85 minute classes have sort of felt a little bit more manageable now. But one thing that I've heard from a lot of students is that they don't really like the C-day thing.

A lot of students and teachers almost Just see it as like almost like a throwaway day almost because like I don't know like not necessarily I wouldn't say a throwaway day but like sort of just a day where you put like all the things like okay this is like small things we need to get done and we don't really take a lot of time to like go deep into content or like start anything new. And also, a lot of students are saying, like, those days can be pretty exhausting because it's, like, rapid fire, like, go, go, go. So I just thought that was pretty interesting. Another thing that I heard from a lot of students was, like, a lot of questions about the Clayton High School library.

Because, like, as we're getting deeper into the school year, it's, like, getting to the point where it's, like, certain clubs and, like, certain activities sort of, like, uniquely need, like, a library space. Spervantage, And then Monday, like next week is homecoming events and activities at the school. Yeah. So next week the librarians will try and put the library together because the furniture is all out there.

We just need to like assemble most of it. And then the following Monday is when we want to let the students start coming in. Oh, that's good news. Yes.

So cross your fingers. Yeah. Another thing I've had recently, I've had a lot of people talk to me about Rosh Hashanah. A lot of students were a little bit irritated because some teachers were having big tests and big labs and other types of things that you can't really do outside of the classroom.

And so, like, I don't know, some students were wondering if, like, we could, like, talk to teachers and be like, okay, we understand, like, school, but, like, maybe having school in such a way where, like, it's easy for someone to, like, get everything done from home. Because, I don't know, it just doesn't really seem fair for some kids to, I don't know, fall behind because of their religion. So, that was just something I've been hearing. And then the last thing is sort of just a more general thing that I've, like, a trend that I've seen, like, across the board.

It sort of seemed like students are sort of struggling a little bit to sort of get fully back into the swing of, like, real school. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Interesting and definitely want to see where that goes. But I just know that a lot of students are almost like, it's not even like they're overwhelmed with a bunch of work.

It just seems difficult to keep up with everything, if that makes sense. So, yeah. Those are good comments. All right.

Well, thank you, Carter. And we're going to talk about our SSD partnership now. All right, good evening, everyone. I want to introduce several very important people who are coming to join us tonight from the Special School District.

Here with us this evening, we have Dr. Elizabeth Keenan, who's the Superintendent of Schools for Special School District. We have Dr. Tammy Yates, who's the Assistant Executive Director of Partner Districts, and Melissa Logan, who is our Director of Special Education from SSD assigned to Clayton.

And tonight we're going to be talking to you about our partnership agreement. So I'll hand it over to the leadership team here. Okay so we wanted to go over the new revised partnership agreement with all of our partner districts And it was revised to increase knowledge and awareness of our expectations Some areas that we have focused on within our partnership agreement is staffing teaching learning accountability collaboration and resources student services data and technology transportation and our career technical education program Within our partnership agreement since May 2022, we have added goals in the area of staffing that we'll go over. We reviewed our standards and indicators progress for teaching, learning, and accountability.

Our collaboration of responsibilities and resources, we also added a component with the PAC team. Student services, we added providing equitable services throughout the county, and then data and technology. We looked at adding equitable processes for our tech services. So within the added components, we added where we've already met with Dr.

Patel, but all directors and coordinators are meeting with the partner district superintendent annually to review our standards, also look at the indicators and artifacts for our administrator performance review, And that way they can have some ownership and feedback of our processes of our staff. Another added component is we will present at the start of each academic year to the SSD leadership team and our partner district with Dr. Weins and Dr. Patel.

The goals that we're going to focus on, the areas of numeracy, literacy, and social-emotional. And then we will also have a focus area for engagement. Management survey that our staff complete. So within that we have the evidence of the special ed director and coordinator, also attendance of our PAC consoles where Dr.

Wings and I have always been part of our PAC team. So that will continue. And the assessment and evaluation team tool will be completed by our liaison, which is I'm Dr. Wings and myself in the fall and spring where we go over our partnership agreement and see where we're falling and where areas of strength are and where we can improve.

So tonight we're asking you guys to acknowledge our partnership agreement by endorsing our vision, our mission, and our statements outlined in our partnership agreement, supporting that collaboration piece and shared responsibility and providing the equitable and seamless implementation of services for every student. We understand that the educational partnership agreement will guide us through the collaborative efforts to enable every child to achieve their fullest potential. We also want to commit to working cooperatively to implement the principles of our partnership agreement within St. Louis County and the districts.

So we are asking for the signatures from our superintendent, Dr. Keenan, from Dr. Patel, from Amy Rubin, and then from our board president, Dr. Cuneo.

So some of the action steps that we are working on this year is around literacy, math, social-emotional, and then our partnership agreement. We also have a goal area. So within reading, we want the students that get reading services, 40% of the students receiving that instruction in reading to meet their growth target of 60th percentile or higher or be at the 50th percentile or higher on the national norm assessment from fall to spring. In the area of math, we're looking for the same growth, at least 40% of students making that growth percentile from 60th or remaining at the 50th percentile or higher.

The area of social-emotional, we're really looking at our spring panorama survey, and we want to increase 10% over baseline under the area of self-efficacy for students with IEPs. We also, Dr. Rings and I have focused on our professional development on the IEP process. So, so far we have presented to three of the buildings to the staff on how they can be a partner with us through our IEP process and how they can really be a good team member for us and provide those accommodations and be thinking partners for the goals and things that the students need.

And in October we'll have met with all the buildings. So the timeline that special school district is looking at for these is in June we completed our partnership agreement by finalizing it no later than this Friday. They want us to meet with all the partner districts to go over the new partnership agreement and then by October 31st they would like those signed agreements completed So what does special education look like here in Clayton? We do have one director myself.

We have an instructional coach that does support all five of the buildings and new teachers and Academy 2 and 3 teachers too. Within that, we have 17 teachers across the district at the five schools, 20 paraprofessionals. We do have one vacancy currently. The district recently added registered behavior technicians, so we do have one vacancy in that area right now.

We have five speech pathologists that work throughout one person at each building. We have a social worker that supports all five schools. We have one occupational therapist that also supports the five schools. We have two school psychologists, and we recently added a school psychologist intern this year.

And within our team, too, we have other individuals that support the district, but they're also supporting other schools, a physical therapist, a music therapist. We have an ABA associate, a vision itinerant, hearing itinerant, and adaptive PE for services. And here is kind of the makeup of students with IEPs in the district. We serve 263 students currently.

112 are at Clayton High School, 57 at Widom, 21 at Compton, 33 at Glenridge, and 40 at Merrimack. Within that, the disability areas are highest is other health impairment with 84 students. And that usually is the students with ADHD or ADD a lot of times. We have learning disability, 54 students, autism at 46, and speech at 40.

Those are kind of our biggest areas that we are supporting students in those areas. Then within our service levels, as you can see, most of the students are in the general education setting at least 80% of the time, which is awesome. You don't see that in a lot of districts, so we're very proud of that. We have in the 40 to 79 percent, 39 students, and less than 40 percent of the time in Gen Ed are six students.

We also work closely with our PAC, our Parent Advisory Council, and Christina Blankenship is our president, that we work closely with on a variety of activities and events to help support the families in the district. One that's coming up tomorrow is charting the life course at the high school where we'll be presenting on the process of after high school, what services and things we can do to help support students when they leave us. We're also looking at having SWEP come in, Teens in Motion, looking at My Disability Roadmap, a documentary with a panel discussion that happened in October or November, hopefully. And then she's looking at some family network socials like the Clayton Police and Firehouse and a yoga event potentially too with a make it and take it.

Any questions? Questions? This isn't really about partnership agreements, but the staffing. How are you handling those vacancies?

Currently we sub some out and then sometimes we're able to pull other staff to help out from other buildings to help support. And we have some, an individual that is pretty much trained with the registered behavior technician, so she's filling in on that position currently. Yeah, I was going to say because some of those are such specific training that you can't just move around your staff. Like everyone has such a specific skill set.

And I know teaching shortages and staffing shortages are obviously not specific to Clayton, but I worry most, of course, I worry a lot about our IEP students. So when I got this last week and I saw the vacancies, I got worried that I was hoping kids weren't missing out on minutes or services or anything. As a team, we're pulling together and helping out. So I'm filling in at some of the schools, too, by making sure all the students are getting what they need and supporting the teachers, too.

Okay. Thank you. The one specialist, it was ABA something. I didn't know what that was.

So it's an applied behavior analysis. And so he the associate that kind of oversees any kind of sometimes for students that have behavior intervention plans He helps write them and helps us with any trouble behaviors that they may have So he supports a few of the schools and the students And then they also have what they call ABA services, Applied Behavior Analysis. So it's now considered a related service. So he helps train and do the programs to implement those services.

And all of those positions are not necessarily full-time within the district, right? All the ones on the top were full-time with the district and the bottom, they support other districts too. So there might be different amounts at different times, kind of as needed? Yeah, so the physical therapist is sometimes in our schools like twice a week, depending on the services and needs.

I think currently she's at like two of the schools that have that need for physical therapy. Sorry, I just have a couple questions. Do you guys feel like you're adequately staffed and resourced just in general? And is 263 students about the average for the last five years?

Do you see that number fluctuate up and down? How do you adjust your staffing for that? How does all of that work? So, yeah, we're always looking at our staffing.

I mean, whenever someone is out, it does cause problematics where we're trying to figure out how best to cover, you know, students because we don't always get subs to cover things. In terms of staffing, our numbers have fluctuated. We used to be higher. We used to be closer to 300 students that we served.

And then during the pandemic, we did go down. And now we're kind of getting back up to where we were before. At the high school, we are higher with numbers. Spervantage, Pursuit, and They come back a couple, moved out of state, and now they're back.

Okay. And if I remember correctly, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, I think your students were some of the first to come back to end school, right? I think they came back before elementary school. They came back certainly before the middle school and the high school.

So hopefully that helped as well. Yeah, we looked at that population that was outside of the GENED less than 40% of the time and really targeted those students to come back first. Okay, wonderful. Thank you.

We're going to be, we're starting our process for our budgeting for next year. We started early so we can get out there and start to recruit and hire teachers over the springtime. So we know that if you don't have a teacher by June, you're not going to be able to fill those vacancies. So we are in the process of that right now.

So we always make sure that we're looking at what the current student needs are. What are they moving by grade levels to the elementary, middle school, high school? Who's graduating out and what's coming in the early childhood? So Melissa does a great job with working through that, but our board is very supportive to make sure that we are looking ahead to know exactly what those needs are so that they have the staffing that they need at that level.

The national average right now for teacher retention is about 17% of our teachers leave year over year. Ssd as special education primarily we would see that higher in a lot of districts but we're sitting at about 8% retention of staff leaving but we're really working hard to make sure that we're making sure that when we hire staff that we can keep them longer. So we have a good track record with it but we also know that we can do better. And also we're looking at a lot of different ways to make sure that with the paraprofessionals that that was This is probably the hardest group and it's our, it's a large group.

We have about 1,900 paraprofessionals across the county. But to be able to recoup that after the pandemic. So a lot of them, we lost about 2% more than we did in the years past. And so being able to bring them back, we're being more aggressive with our actual salary schedules.

Also giving them opportunity to move through our system and have opportunity to go up into different positions. So you can start as a teaching assistant. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you.

How does our special school district compare to if you look at model special school districts other places, do you guys coordinate or collaborate, you know, in other parts of the state, in other parts of the region? Is there any, because we often look at that as a board, right? I mean, is it? We're the leader of the state.

That's what I figured. Yeah, that's what I figured. So where do you go for your professional development and learning? Where do you send your staff for that?

Locates. Yeah, there's many different levels. I will tell you, we are a model for many. I have had the fortunate opportunity to work for both special school districts and 40 districts out in St.

Charles County where we don't have a dual district system. And so, I mean, there's pros and cons to both systems, But it's really giving us an opportunity. We do ask and reach out to those districts. There is a national and a state association for administrators of special education.

And so that national one is called CASE, the Council for Administrators of Special Education. And then there's a MO-CASE. And so we have a state board and we have what's called LACE groups, which are local administrators of special education. We love our acronyms.

And those are kind of placed throughout the state. And so those are resources for many of our administrators. We attend that MoCase conference, many of us. We just sent 32 of our administrators to that conference over the weekend.

And so we do have a lot of opportunities for that collaboration and that growth of our administrators. And then because we're such, set up how we are in such a great organization, we have a lot of resources that many districts across the state do not have. And so just tapping into those. So we have a lot in-house that we have to offer.

That's great. I've been to other districts. This is my fourth year here, but I was in Chicago Public Schools, and I was also in a large urban district in Minnesota. This is the best system ever.

I mean, because St. Louis County, back in 1957, voted to have this tax to be able to support special needs students that doesn't exist anywhere in the country. So typically what would happen is, you know, In my other districts that I was in, you receive your state funding for special ed, you receive your federal funding for special ed. The rest of it was always having to be picked up by the general population of tax base within the general education of students.

So 50% of the $9 million budget that we provide for Clayton would have to be picked up by Clayton. And so the way St. Louis County has distributed this is that because we're the entity that is able to provide the special ed programming, we can provide 100% fully funded, doesn't have to come out of the separate budget for Clayton, it's 100% funded. That doesn't exist anywhere else in the United States.

That's awesome. Yeah. I did not know that. Yes.

It is absolute gem. So when I had the opportunity to apply for this position, I didn't even know what it was because it doesn't exist anywhere else. And it's the forethought and it was the real intentional thought around how they built this special school district. We're the 10th largest employer in this region.

We have over 6,000 employees. It's a large system, but it's also a small system to be able to support each individual district individually. So that's really how we want to make sure we individualize it at the level of each district, but also understanding the bigger pieces of it. And that ballot measure that was put in place, I'll ask for that funding, does that exist in perpetuity or is it ever at any point come up in state statute?

That's great. Yep. So they not only brought it to the voters, but they brought it to a state statute level. 25 years before special education was required by law in public school systems.

Wow, there's hope for St. Louis politics. Exactly. It's like, what is this place?

I mean, like, I just said something. It's a bright, shining star. Absolutely. And it's like people don't know about it.

No. It's absolutely amazing. Yes. Thank you.

I learned a ton. I also just wanted, in general, thank you for your partnership. First of all, your work in this new agreement, but just your partnership in general based on everything you're just saying. But especially, I don't think I've seen you, Dr.

Keenan, since COVID was over. I hate to say post-COVID, but anyway, I know that was especially challenging for you more so than us. Because I know kids with IEPs legally are entitled to a certain number of minutes of services. And I know that was a huge challenge.

So thank you for. Yeah. And thank you Melissa You know for making sure students got what they needed So I appreciate it And I think you know to Melissa credit I mean bringing the students back before anybody else brought them in So, I mean, that was absolutely wonderful. And it was so needed for those families that were ready for it.

Yeah. So. Can I ask two quick questions? Yeah.

So, first of all, do you guys contract out for any of these staff positions? We do for nursing, some of those hard to fill positions, nursing is one of our areas. We try to make sure that we contract internally as much as possible. Sure.

Yeah. Okay. And maybe just talk a little bit about how you make sure you maintain the quality with the staffing agency versus like a W-2 employee. Yes.

We work with each one of those contracts and we make sure that we are, like, the expectations around it. We have enough nurses, I think we have over 83 nurses, that we have enough to be able to supervise and support those. They're not the primary ones when they come in as a contract one, but we want to make sure that the quality is equivalent to what we expect for all of our other nurses. All right.

And then just out of curiosity, the 60th growth percentile figure, is there any magic behind that 60 number or is there any rationale? That's what special has always looked at that because then they're getting closer to shortening the gap. So that's what we look for is that 60th growth percentile growth. Okay, that's your sort of standard in the space.

Yeah, great. Yeah, and Clayton's students do really well in special education. And I don't want to say this in a demeaning way or anything, But I think that, you know, the Clayton special ed students are outperforming some of our gen ed students and some of our other districts. So it's just a testimony to the quality of the teaching staff, the staff that they're not only being exposed to supporting them in the special ed, but having them in the gen ed environment is so critical.

And that is, you know, as Melissa talked about, that, you know, most districts, it's closer to 50% of the students are pulled out for the majority of the time. We're working with them to move it, but it is so important for those students to, no matter what, if you have a, whatever your disability is, you should be able to participate in the gen ed environment and be exposed to what other, their peers are being exposed to. That's critical and Clayton has that model and it's just a really good model for our students. What's the closest district when it comes to that measurement in St.

Louis? Who would you compare us to? Who would compare us to? You guys are one of the top ones.

Obviously, because you got the award here. Okay, so we have the second one is Kirkwood, Lindbergh. Are they far behind us? No, I know it sounds funny, but I'm not being funny.

I'm just trying to find out how you're saying our students are doing really well, and you named Kirkwood. I'm just trying to find out what's the second and third district How far behind us are they? I don't know that specifically right now, but we can pull that in. You don't have to.

I'm just trying to find out. I'm always trying to think about, you know, we're a wealthy district. We've got parents that have resources, a lot of resources. I'm just trying to figure out how much of it is the fact that we have resources that we can get our kids after school stuff.

And you're looking at a school district with minimal resources. Minimal resources. And they're struggling. So I'm just trying to find out, like, it's kind of hard to brag.

It's kind of like, eh. Yeah. And I understand that. And what we try to do as a special school district is for those districts that, when we look at the budgeting process, we do look at those districts that don't have as many resources as a Clayton would have.

But we also make sure that we offset some of those to support them. We are legally obligated to make sure that we're taking care of the special ed part of it. But we also are engaging with conversations with how do we enhance some of these pieces so that we can help support some of your gen ed initiatives for interventions so students aren't identified at a higher rate in some districts, which happens. And so making sure that we're able to support them to provide interventions to help guide them with additional funds to be able to make sure that they can do as much as they can to keep their students in their gen ed environments.

So we have to be mindful about how we brag about how we're number one or something. When I know there a disparity out there does it make me really feel good you know we number one we the richest that all And I think I say that because it good for you to know as a board that your students are performing well And it great to see that And we want to make sure that we always up to the expectations to support our students And we look at every district We been meeting with every superintendent across the 22 districts and we make sure that we identifying what are the needs in the schools So we have a wide variety of scales of where our students are performing, but Clayton is definitely at the top. Thank you. I'll say a couple things, too.

First of all, hello to Dr. Keenan. We got to be in a breakout room together last week when I was at my first governing council meeting. It was wonderful, and I got to see this.

I just want to give props to SSD because what you guys aren't bragging about is the fact that every four years you go through a review process, and their review process is rigorous. A group of 20-some folks met for an entire year to review what they do and what they can do better, and I think that shows in what you do and why this partnership is working so well because you guys are so committed. So I want to say, you know, on behalf of all of our students, especially those that, you know, get your services, that it's a wonderful thing to be partnered with you. So we really appreciate that.

And secondly, I wanted to make sure that the board in general knows and hears that PAC is our parent group, as hopefully you all know, Thank you. Thank you. I have a quick question. So just out of curiosity, what do we do to sort of make sure that all the students who need like special help are getting it?

Because I know it just sort of seems like some students and parents might not know if their kid needs like special help. So every school has kind of what they call a care team kind of process or problem solving team where the teachers bring the students to that team to help problem solve and decide what interventions we could try to help and then look at if we are suspecting a disability, what we would do for that evaluation. And parents also can bring that to the school team too, to the counselors. They kind of start the process, and then we help with the intervention ideas to help support and look at what the needs are.

So just as a follow-up to that, so if a parent comes and they, if a parent would like a child to be tested for SSD services, do we, will that child automatically get tested? No, they would go through a review of existing data kind of information in a joint review meeting with the counselor and our school site to kind of determine what evidence do we have to suspect a disability or to not. And then we would let the family know if we're accepting the proposal to evaluate the student or if we don't suspect a disability, we would also give them notice that at this time we don't suspect a disability. I struggle with that a little bit because I feel like there's situations where, you know, because parents that do have money, they can take, get independent testing done.

And parents that don't have the resources can't necessarily have the independent testing done. And I know anecdotally there's families where we, you know, the school said no, no problem. And then they take it for independent, they take the child for independent testing. And then those results come back and there is a problem.

So, go ahead. So I just worry that, you know, the families in Clayton that don't have the resources to then take their kids somewhere else. So we can share that even if they do take them for independent testing that doesn mean they automatically qualify for an educational disability So we required by law to consider any information that's brought to us, but there are state criteria that we have to thoroughly go through. And so it doesn't matter where the testing would come from for that.

We still have, the The process is still very equitable in what we have to look at. Okay. Any other questions? Wasn't there an issue with the, wasn't there a flip side of that, though?

Like, people taking their children for independent testing, getting like the 504 or whatever it is, IEP, And then being able to sit outside and take the ACT test and then get into like Harvard. You all remember that? I can't remember. But it was a thing.

I thought it was a thing. Where people were like getting these independent, I need extra time type things. Remember that? In high school, a lot of times we will see that more families kind of look at that route Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Thank you all for being here. Thank you for your hard work. We appreciate it and are more than happy to sign that agreement. Thank you.

Okay, so we are now on goal, our goal to update Empowered Learning. So, Melaina is going to come talk to us. So as Melaina gets settled in there, I just wanted to remind the board, you know, throughout the year we give these goal updates. But this one is, for me, I think in education we're reaching like a tipping point with what the future of education looks like.

And we keep talking about, you know, how we have to be innovative and how we have to be transformational. But when you just look at our students in the classroom, right, we have Gen Zs, which are 12th grade and above, and then we have Gen Alpha. Those are the two generations that we're really focused on and trying to make sure that we are creating a world for giving them the skills to be ready for a world that does not even exist yet, right? They were saying that Gen Alpha, which is all our 12 year olds and younger, is going to be the largest generation in the history of the world.

These are the kids who are used to the screen, right? Everything that exists is through this world. So if we continue to teach the way we've always taught, the traditional ways, the way we are used to, we're not preparing them for the real world and what it's going to look like. And so it's important, and Melaina and I talked about it, that that's why she's doing this presentation, is that we around this table need to understand what's happening in our classrooms and what our focus really is when we talk about empowered learning.

An example of that was just today when Stacy and I were invited to a first grade classroom to be part of a panel. And we had three classes of first graders, so about 40, 50 kids. And they asked us questions about our role in the world, in the community, which tied into their social studies unit. So teaching and learning looks completely different, and it should look completely different, right?

There was an article that came out that I was just like, I had to read that three times from the World Economic Forum. And it said in the 1980s, when we taught our students skills, like transferable skills, the shelf life for that was three decades. Now, when we teach our students skills, the shelf life is five years. Three decades to five years.

So when we talk about empowering our students and giving them choice and voice and pace and path and place, that's what we need to focus on. And then everything else, which I'm not going to get on my soapbox, but to standardized test scores, that comes secondary if we really do this work well. I'll hand it off to you, Dr. Garganito.

Thank you. So our district strategic plan focuses in these three areas of a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. And what we've grown to appreciate and really actually embrace about our strategic plan is the Connectedness of these three goals. So really believing that we can't focus on one without focusing on the other two.

And the thing that centers our work is our profile of the graduate. So what we want our graduates to be, good people, when they leave us. So while the interconnectedness of these three goals is important, tonight I'm going to amplify one of them. But I really can't talk about this idea of empowered learning and the idea of growing learners without also knowing that the idea of Relationship, a sense of belonging is all really important to, like, we can't empower learners if they don't feel a sense of belonging and they don't feel like they're valued.

So, goal two was written like this for the strategic plan. And I think, I remember sitting in a meeting with Stacy at one point and saying, the very first thing we're going to have to do is define all these terms and what these terms mean to us. And last year I came to you and I showed you this graphic, which was sort of my initial first stab at defining the terms. And it did not really define anything.

So it became, I think it actually muddied the waters for things. But the one thing that I think was really important is the center of this pentagram. So the idea of our standards and our objectives, those things don't change. We know what we want students to learn.

What changes is the approach. So the pedagogical approach is the pedagogical approach. The way that we're approaching the work with students, the relationship that students have with content, the relationship that students and teachers have together to really explore those things. So I didn't love that graphic.

So then we lifted it up about 10,000 feet and said instead of spending a lot of time focused on the idea of differentiation, personalization, individualization, and like spending time arguing about what those things might be and all of us might define those differently, we said let's lift it up to this idea of empowered learning. So we wanted it to be clear to everyone that the learner has a significant role in the teaching and learning environment. So, empowerment infers a certain level of ownership. So, students having ownership of their learning.

So, in working with Chris, one of the things that he encouraged me to think about is really like the story of our work. And how can we make what's clear to us as educators clear to those who aren't educators? And so, my stab at sort of a tweet-sized description of empowered learning looks like this. So the idea of it being a pedagogical approach where learners' voices are heard, their perspectives are valued, their identities celebrated, strengths and talents are acknowledged and supported within a learning environment.

So that goes back to that idea of the interconnectedness of the goals. So a place for everyone, their identities are celebrated. In head and heart, a sense of belonging being the focus on a place where learners' voices are heard and their perspectives are valued. So one complex part of empowered learning is the importance of learners feeling that they're empowered and expressing that.

It isn't just that we think as adults that we're empowering students. So John Spencer shared this graphic in a blog post as a part of a reflection on thinking that he was empowering students, but actually he was still making all the decisions. So he looked through, he was thinking through his practice, and he was deciding the pace at which everyone worked. The destination was the same for every student.

He was in control of the resources and farming them out to the students. And he called it being a tourist teacher. So showing kids empowering aspects, but not letting them have any agency in the process. So as a district, when we started to talk about empowered learning, we identified sort of different areas that as a teacher is planning their lessons, they could think through that lens as a way of empowering students.

So pace, meaning that the learners control the time needed to complete a task. Place, meaning that they control the location that they learn. Path, that learners control how they demonstrate their learning. Voice, that learners are vocalizing their needs and wants.

And choice, that learners are owning their learning experience and teachers are serving more in a role as facilitator. So to help with the story, I just have a few slides from classrooms last week. So I was in classrooms all last week walking through, and I just want to walk you through sort of how these are sort of breadcrumbs of evidence of our work in working towards empowerment. So this is an example of a first grade classroom.

Learners are beginning to learn the routines of altering pace. As they some of our youngest learners there obvious scaffolds in place They can do that on their own without us providing some support to them So the teacher has generated a list of options for students to engage with during a defined portion of the class time It's important to note that this is not all day. And it's not all the time in a content area or something like that. It's a defined amount of time.

It's not a rush to the finish line. So this isn't students in first grade saying, how quickly can I get through this? And that the teacher has maintained some control over what is a need to do. So you'll see it indicated with yellow dots here.

So this student needs to do those two things and then has choice in the other things that they do. This is from a second grade classroom, and it's an example of PATH. It does not replace teacher-led instruction. The teacher still teaches a lesson, but then the students have agency to revisit the lesson by watching a video, if they need to or if they choose to.

And they can do it at any time. So they might think that they're okay with the lesson after the teacher's taught it, start with some independent work or some partner work, And then think, maybe I need to go back and revisit that video. Or the teacher might confer with them and say, let's go back and re-watch the video. So it provides opportunity for that.

Student has choice with partner work and independent work as they see fit. And the teacher still influences the student's choice of path as they confer individually with students. So the students aren't just left to their own means to work. The teachers are walking around the room working with them.

But students aren't waiting on other students to finish things before they can keep moving through their choices. This is an example of a seventh grade science class. You might have heard the term project-based learning, and that is an example of empowered learning, which uses multiple aspects of our five areas that we talk about. Students are posed with or co-create a driving question.

So a question that's big, complex, it addresses several learning standards for a particular unit. In this instance, students generated then their own questions related to the driving question which can serve as a guide to the teacher on gauging interest and determining several paths of learning. So you'll see here the questions that were developed by the class and then the class, representatives of the class then manipulated all of those post-it notes into categories, named the categories. So it gives the teacher a good sense of like, what are my students interested in with this topic?

Where should I start to focus some of my mini lessons? The places where students might not be expressing interest, I might have to change my practice as a teacher, not to not teach it, but to teach it in a way that may be more engaging to students. So those questions are influencing the teacher's mini-lessons throughout the work. And then in this instance, the students also had agency in their product, and they used what's called a scrum board, which people who are in business might know more of what that is than what I know what it is.

But the way it's described to me is this sense of they're capturing what are the tasks or what are the deliverables That we need to, in order to sort of complete this project, students have determined the deliverables, determined the pace at which they're going to work and the different components, and then they move those across the board as they become more and more complete. But there has to be some kind of collaboration with students. So an individual student can't move something across the scrum board by themselves. There has to be conferring among students to be able to do that.

So this seventh grade classroom has sort of a lot of aspects of what we're looking at with empowered learning. This is a senior English class. Students are given time and space to apply their newly acquired knowledge using partnerships, small groups, individual time, and time with their teacher to really dig into things and to have some agency in how they approach the work that they're doing and how long that they want to stay with that. So the instance of the graffiti wall in the hallway, what I witnessed was some students there for a few minutes and some students there for a lot longer.

And it just was sort of what they needed, and they had that agency to determine that. This is in a fourth grade classroom. In recent years, place has been a challenging aspect of learning. COVID mitigation really forced us to all learn away from one another on a virtual platform.

And then we came back to school and all of us were learning one another together with one another, but we were all in the same space. Limited interaction, limited proximity to one another. And this year, we're really seeing students returning to that idea of student choice of seating and location of their learning within the teaching and learning environment. Students can be seen making choices as frequently as several times a day So some teachers each time the students come back from specials each time students are making new choices or just as they come in at the beginning of the day So those days of everyone having an assigned desk and staying there for the duration of the lesson has really changed a lot within our classroom settings And then finally, an example with our youngest learners.

The Family Center staff has developed these beautiful descriptors of the elements of empowered learning with images and stories. And if you're familiar with the work of our Family Center, they really do a really nice job of telling the story where students are not always able to tell the story themselves. So they put words there for the students. And I think these are shared on the walls of the classrooms as well as within the blogs that they share with parents.

And I think what's interesting with this is the deliberate connection to the profile of the graduate. So we think of our youngest learners, and we're starting to already talk about these competencies of the profile. So the profile continues to be our grounding tool, and it's the tool that centers our work and explains our why. The aspects of empowered learning are often seen as teacher-facing tools to influence lesson planning and instruction, and the profile serves as the measure of our determining success.

Our theory of practice is that empowered lessons positively influence our students' attainment of the profile competencies. Some of the tools that we have developed to help teachers with this include a website devoted to the three goals of the strategic plan. This teacher-facing tool is intended to support teachers as they plan and work with students, considering what they want to get better at and providing them with ideas and resources to help with that. So our Goal 2 website, what you'll see across the top is that there's a page for each, pace, place, path, voice, and choice.

And then there's a slide deck that's a crowdsourced slide deck. So teachers submit ideas of ways that one can alter these things within the classroom and grade spans that they're appropriate for. So as a teacher's planning, they can come here and they can say, I really want to do something different with path. I don't know what to do.

So this gives them ideas. So we crowdsource it, and once a month we update. So they submit on Google Forms and then we update it for them. So it's a living document.

So those are some of the tools that we've been putting in place to help. Another measure of our work with students is a newly developed tool to provide feedback to students and ultimately to families on the competencies of the profile. We began with considering the competencies through the lens of each elementary key stage, and then we'll be adding middle school and high school through committee work this year. In addition to defining the competencies of the different levels, we've also developed a learning progression to better describe the path of a student in becoming proficient in the competencies.

So this tool will help teachers with conferring with students, ultimately providing clear feedback, then leading towards, so this year we're using it within our classrooms with students and teachers, and teachers were just introduced to this tool, So, with an intent of leaning into parent-teacher conferences to start talking about those things, ultimately to be on the report card. As a way of providing feedback to families of how their students are doing towards achieving the competencies. Our other measures of success and accountability that we've been working on include these things. So, the PIT is our Principal Instructional Talk-Through.

So, once a month, Nisha and I work with the principals and we go into each building. And the principal, the host principal asks us to go into classrooms and collect data for them. And then we sit and process those data together to see what is the evidence that we see. Relative to, generally speaking, it's been relative to empowered learning and competencies of the profile.

So what are we seeing within the classrooms? The same is true with blast walkthroughs. It's the same concept. It's just teaching staff as opposed to administrative staff walking through classrooms.

Same kind of idea, collecting evidence of what we see happening. I'm working with a group of teachers that we're calling the Empowered Learning Lab cohort, and it's one to two representative teachers from each building that I'm learning alongside them in their classrooms of ways that we can empower. So it's really based on where they want to go. So they have a lot of agency in deciding what they want to focus on.

I'm their coach, but I want to be careful that you understand what our definition of coach in the district is, is that we're co-researchers. So I'm not omniscient. I'm not perfect with this, but I'm happy to be in the muck with them and learn alongside them, and that's what we're doing. Our live classroom teachers, we've talked before about that cohort of teachers, same kind of thing.

A lot of them are studying empowered learning and studying this idea of empowerment within their classroom. As a cohort then we come in do observations collect data for the teachers So students often see us They call us the people with the clipboards And we come into classrooms we collect data and then sit and talk with the teacher about like what are some ideas moving forward. And then portfolios, digital portfolios is really the place that we think is probably going to be our best way of capturing evidence of the competencies of a student's career within the district. So right now it's a little idiosyncratic.

So different classrooms are trying things out with a goal of us looking at a universal digital portfolio for students. So when they leave us in the high school, they will have had all this evidence of them working towards these profile competencies. So the work's exciting, but it's messy. And I want to remind you that it's messy and that we're working with people.

And that when we're talking about teaching and learning, it's a lot of like experimentation and seeing does it work and what progress can we make. So we're leaning into the mess, really trying to recapture our pre-COVID energy. But we're really excited about this work. So what questions do you have?

So obviously, this is really cool. And I know a lot of kids are very excited about this vision for the future of having a lot more accountability over what they're learning. I guess my main question is, moving forward into the future, how do we make these types of things more of a norm rather than an exception? Yeah.

So a lot of what it has been is planning out professional learning opportunities for teachers to learn. The side-by-side piece I think has been an important piece of, it's one thing to sit in with a group of 100 teachers and hear about this and then be like, I don't know where to go with it. It's another to sit with a thinking partner and really plan through a lesson or plan through a unit. And so right now I feel like I'm starting small with this empowered learning cohort to figure out how do I scale it bigger for the whole district.

And that's kind of my vision of that work is let me start small with the group and then try to scale big with the support of the principals. And then we have a lot of other adults in the building, so we have a lot of coaches in buildings to try to help support that. So it's not just dependent on me. Because if it's like me trying to get to 400 teachers, like we're never going to get there.

So like how do we sort of scale that in that way to support? And I also, I'll piggyback on that. I also think part of that is structures, Carter. So for example, like I know the block schedule was really a byproduct of COVID, but giving teachers 85 minutes to actually dig into lessons like that, as opposed to your C-Day that you had today that was just like sit and get, let's go, sit and get, let's go, right?

So having block scheduling and the time to actually have a lesson this way. One of the other things I think we're trying to work with the teachers on is, like, Nisha and I both say this, that you can't eat an elephant in one bite. So, like, what's the one place that you can start? Like, what's the one small change that you can make today that would make a difference for your students tomorrow?

Start there. So, like, as a student, you might not see this, like, right away, but I could make one small change. So I could offer a choice board in your class, and now I'm not getting 25 of the same papers. I'm getting different things.

But I still, as a teacher, have control over what I feel like is acceptable evidence of learning. But you now have choice of four things instead of I tell you what you're doing. Are you seeing any evidence of this in the high school today? I guess when you sort of break it down like that, you can sort of see it happening a little bit more.

I would say in general, most kids' experience isn't super like I'm guiding what I do. But I guess when you sort of break it down and think of all the little things, you can definitely see that people are trying. But I mean, obviously, like, we aren't to the point yet where it's like, this is like a norm and like, people are deciding what they learn yet. What's that gap between it being a norm and where we are?

Does that make sense? Like, I don't even... You mean like, what's a timeline? I don't even know what I mean.

I mean, because I think Carter's saying, yeah, OK, I can see some things, but where does it become, how far are we from where he doesn't even have to ask that question? That's a philosophical question. Yeah, I think Carter's assessment is a fair assessment at the high school. I think the younger our learners are, the more likely we are to see this right now with I think the older our students are getting, and there's a little bit of a tension there, right?

That, like, when I think of high school people, I often think of, like, there's a lot of content to cover. And I come in from this, like, you know, I'm not a content expert in every area, but, like, I will focus on pedagogy. And sometimes there's a tension there, right? And so I think that's the piece that we're sort of working through right now.

And I think the ways that we're trying to do that is through these different programs that I have listed here, of like each time we impact someone and there's some change, they're going to talk to someone. So they may talk to their office mate or something like that. And then we also cycle through different people. And the more that we can have the principals on board to provide feedback on this, so like some of our work with the principals this year through our meetings is around really understanding this and how to coach it.

So providing the support to the principals to be able to have those coaching conversations to be able to influence. I think there's also a piece of like when you provide feedback through evaluation or whatever, when we go in to do observations of classrooms, being able to say, to put an empowered learning graphic in front of them and say, so where are you with this? What's one thing you can try next week that's going to make a difference? The more we can infuse it into our conversations, I think the faster we're going to get there.

Change in education is slow, usually, and I think we're trying to accelerate it But the truth right now is that we're seeing it more with the younger students than with the older. So you talked about a crowdsourcing tool for teachers. What about at the high school crowdsourcing from the students? Would that be a way to accelerate the feedback that you get in terms of, you know, what they're experiencing that they love and what they're experiencing that they can't stand?

And is there some area of interest that is not covered by, I know we have tons of electives at the high school, but is there something that, something you wish the high school had that it doesn't provide now? I mean, would that be another way to get feedback, especially since you've seen less of it with the older kids? Yeah. I think another thing that I've sort of noticed is like, especially when you get up into the high school, it's like for a lot of kids, they feel almost like pushed into like certain classes, certain buckets.

It's like, you know, a lot of kids are like wanting to take honors and AP classes. And what I've noticed is that a lot of the times in those classes, it's a lot more like structured, like this is the content, this is what we're going to do. And so I feel like that also makes it a little bit more difficult for the students who want to learn a lot and are very intellectually curious to really branch off and do it on their own. Something I know that other schools do is they have very open classes.

I think there's an AP research class or something where they can basically just take an AP class and do whatever they want. So, I don't know, I thought that... Like a senior project kind of deal? Yeah, and then they get like, I don't know.

Yeah, there's a lot of high schools that do that type of thing. Kind of a question I was similar to what Carrie was asking. So, if I heard you right, you're working on something that you want to have ready then to scale throughout the district. Did I hear that?

So, the scaling part was when I was talking about the Empowered Learning Lab. It's a small cohort right now. Okay, okay, so just one thing with that. Right, so it's like one aspect of this.

A lot of our professional development this year, like in our year-long plan across the district, is focused in this work. So thinking through, like the coordinators are thinking through from their content lens. The buildings are thinking through from their building lens. So we're not waiting for me to scale that small group to be focused on this work.

Okay. So I guess I'm, like, is there, I see these measures of success. These are, these striking as, like, activities that we're doing that will lead to measures. So what are, are there, like, three key measures that you said, like, these are the three ways five years from now that we know that we're doing better at this or whatever?

Is that, is that, it's hard because this is a very qualitative, like, thing. Sure The piece that I had with the elementary report card so the teacher facing so this is a little bit of what ultimately some component of this is going to be parent facing also The teacher facing part of this is a little bit of what ultimately some component of this is going to be parent also The teacher part of this is a continuum of being able to look at where students are now and how I can continue to grow students within these competencies. So we've done this work at the elementary. Now we need to do the middle school and the high school to be able to say, so what does it mean when we say a student coming out of our school district is self-actualized?

What are the things that we will see, and how will that be reflected academically as well as just within the ways that they approach things? Right. So will there be any sort of roll-up of these report cards so you can identify grade levels, individual teachers, whomever that might need additional professional development moving forward to this? Yeah, I think ultimately what will, so ultimately what happens with this is the ways that the principals support the teachers with these tools once we have these tools in place.

And we, so once we have them developed and we have started to think about how to use them, then it's the principal's role to provide feedback to people to continue to help them grow with those practices and what they're seeing in students' classrooms. Got it, thank you. And just as a side note, I love this report card and the fact that we're going to bring it up at parent-teacher conferences and just make it more and more part of the culture, I think is really important. That's really evident in what I've seen, some of my walk-throughs with Dr.

Patel and this. I think that's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, so I love this also.

This is awesome, and your presentation was great. I had all the questions they asked, I had questions about them. I'm sorry. So, but, no, but, but.

We'll go reverse next time. No, no, it's cool. No, it's cool. But, but, but I ask you unique questions also.

So, so like the application, how, how is, is there resistance at all for some of these teachers? This is, this is kind of transformative, obviously. This is a, this is like kind of anti-conventional learning, the way we teach now. Like totally the opposite side of the, of the fence here.

Is there resistance of any of these teachers that may not be interested in really learning this new way of individualized, personalized learning? I don't know if I would describe it as resistance. I think there's sometimes of, like, there are people who think, like, I have done things the way that I've done things and it's worked. Why are you asking me to change?

And so sitting down and having those conversations to talk about like why is this good for students. The idea of moving from a sense of like helping people to understand that like you may have a lot of content knowledge and you may stand up in front of a class and talk a lot, but that doesn't mean that the kids are learning. So we need evidence of learning, in which case we have to give students more ownership and more agency of what's going on. So having those conversations, I think anytime we can find sort of small wins, so that idea of like, let's just try one thing.

Like, what's the one thing that feels the most comfortable for you to try? We'll try it. Let's see what the outcome of it is, and then build off of that. I haven't had anybody who says, no way.

Right. But it's also like there's some component of like, it's hard. It's, you know, I said at the end, like this work is messy. It is messy and it's hard sometimes to lean into the mess.

And coming out of COVID, it's even harder to lean into the mess. Because there's this sense of like, I just want to get back to normal, whatever normal is. And so I think there's that. But I would say we have a lot of conversation about it with people, but normally if I can convince somebody to try something small and they see something different, like you can tell from kids whether they're like, with you, or they're like, no, I'm done.

And that's what we're looking for is that piece, because I feel like that's more rewarding as a teacher when the kids are like right there with you Thank you. Maybe a third on a pretty consistent basis maybe And I would say that a lot more like I said before it a lot more evidence with our youngest one How popular is this amongst the parents? Like how do we advertise this to our homes? And that's the thing that we've talked about, that we're doing all this work with our staff, right?

We're doing all the work with our administrators. What we really also need to focus on is obviously the students, but the parents is the piece that we're really trying this year to really educate them. So we've been working with our principals in their newsletters, if they're sending out, are they referencing back to Empowered Learning and how our North Star is the profile? Are we talking about it in our communication, on our social media?

How are we engaging our parents? And that's really been a focus this year with our administrators to really put that out with the parents. Even during parent-teacher conferences, when you come in, are we having these conversations? Like, this is a shift that we're making with teaching and learning.

I think a little bit also is, like, we, like, our theory of practice there is, like, our teachers have to be a little bit ahead of what we're communicating with our parents so that our teachers feel comfortable to respond. Because parents aren't going to come to me and ask me questions. They're going to go to the classroom teacher and ask the classroom teacher questions. So that's part of our rollout with this is a little slower.

So the report card piece is not going to happen on this report card. The report card piece will happen in the January of 23 report card. But our conversations with parents can start before that. Okay, yeah.

And these are the questions that I had. I mean, in theory, this is an incredible plan that we have, strategic plan, right? And when reading this, you know, I am optimistic. But I'm also saying this is tough because we're talking about culture.

So I kept thinking about, you know, you use the language you use, which is not, the teachers are not resistant. Which is good language. But I mean, I'm just trying to figure out like how do you get around that? Because that is the impediment and that's going to dictate the speed in which you're able to roll it out.

And if you wanted to put together like a plan, like a two, three, five year plan, we plan to be at this level of application and efficacy rates of this should be seen. We can't, you know, how do you do that? How do you put that together? You know what I'm saying?

How do we create that? Is that something we even should do? Should we have a five-year plan, say, or have a fictitious date online saying, we should be here at this time? You know, at 90% implementation.

And then how do you measure how effective we are at this? You know what I'm saying? Is that something we should be doing? Would that help drive the ball faster?

I asked Amy earlier, I was like, we don't really advertise this. This isn't new to us. This isn't like we created this last year. When did we come up with the strategic plan?

Yeah, Dr. Doherty was here, right? Dr. Doherty was here, right?

Last year was the true first year. Last year was in the end. Okay, yeah, right, right. This is obviously during COVID, right?

So I did take that into consideration as well, but I'm just saying, like... I would say that Nisha and I have had a lot of conversation and, like, vision of this. And, like, we... Both of us are very, like, let's go, let's go, let's go.

And then, like, something happens that we're like, oh, wait, we need to slow down a little bit. Like, we were ready to go, go, go, and then got some feedback that, like, this is going to take a little bit more, like, professional development than what we thought it was going to take. So it needed to, the pace needed to slow a little. So, like, I was ready to roll the report card out sooner than everybody else was ready to roll the report card, right?

So I need to be, like, recalibrated in that way to say, okay, in order for us to really do this effectively, our teachers have to have the right tools in place and the right sort of comfort level. But at the same time, like, that's a little dicey, too, because I can't wait until everybody's, like, 100% comfortable, because otherwise they will always be waiting. That's not a big deal. So there's some piece of, like, where's the right, like, part of the precipice where we're jumping off.

So what's an example of what you all were like, let's go, and then all of a sudden something happens? Well, I think this is a good example. I think the report card is a good example. We finished the work in a committee so it was a small committee We hadn rolled it out to the whole elementary staff yet We were ready to put it on this year report card not having rolled it out to the whole staff When we rolled it out to the whole staff, it was like, well, hold on a minute.

We need to do some work with this before we're really, really good. Because the profile is not, I mean, in some ways it's relatively new to the staff. It's relatively new to all of us. At the same time that we were trying to shift up the ways that we were teaching because of a pandemic and everything like that.

So there's a little bit of trying to put that into context that I would say I'm not always great at because I'm like, let's go. So I need other people to sort of help calibrate me in that way. Gotcha. Are all the principals on board?

Would you tell us if they were? Good question. Well, does it change, I asked, Jason's question asked in a different fashion. Does it change how you look at new candidates for hiring open positions or positions of attrition?

When I think about what you said, Nisha, about how we're, you know, at this kind of inflection point in education, we have historically valued teachers with a long teaching history of experience. But if previous experience, while still incredibly valuable and can't be discounted in terms of the amount of content, to use your words, Milena, that they know that they can try to impart to their students. But if that needs to be balanced against these other intangible, in some ways, skill sets that are needed in order to reach Carter and my kids and all of us who have kids, does that change how we think about hiring candidates in the future? I think it could.

I think one of the things that we, and part of our interview process is deliberately focused on this, of like, there are certain things that we can teach. So we can, and our onboarding process is a really thorough onboarding process. But within the interview process, one of the things that we look for is your level of coachability. Can we coach you?

So we have you teach a lesson, and then we sit down and we coach you. And part of that whole thing is to unpack not just how well you taught the lesson, but how well do you respond to feedback and growth? How open are you to growth? If somebody is open to those things, I think we can work with them through our onboarding process to help the same way we're doing our professional learning with this now.

So what I did with the principals two weeks ago was I ran the professional learning as an empowered learning lesson. So I modeled what we would want it to look like within our classrooms, but the content was what we were doing with the professional learning. We can do that in our onboarding process with teachers, but if you're not responsive to feedback, it's much harder for us to, and you're set in your ways, that's hard to work with. So what do we do in this situation?

I am thinking about attrition. Just in general, there's got to be a timeline. I'm just saying, in business, there's a timeline in which you get people to get on board, or they got to ride out. They got to get early retirement packages.

Right, right. We're offering you an early retirement package. So I'm saying, now listen, I'll take the heat for that, so I don't mind. I'm saying this.

But that's not how you all, I'm probably not saying this. It's a nice little language that I'm saying. So how do you manage that situation? And if I'm thinking correctly, intuitively, is there also a pool of candidates that we're trying to rack up on to start dealing with the nutrition process?

If you give people a date, is the date in which you need to be ready to roll? If you're not ready to roll, we're thinking about getting you out of here and we have this pool of candidates we're looking at. I know that sounds crazy, but I'll take the heat for that. The good thing is I'm not an educator.

So, one thing that I would say about that is that's part of the reason why we have the evaluation process built in the way that we do, to provide feedback to do that. So, we're a little out of my wheelhouse in that part. The providing feedback I can do. But the other part, we're a little out of my wheelhouse.

The piece about like pool of candidates, you know, we have this partnership with Truman where we bring in the interns. And one of the things that Truman, within that partnership, one of the things that's been really cool is that the professor spends a lot of time here with us and knows our district very well, knows what we're working on. So then is going back to Truman and her courses and teaching things related to like in Clayton, here's what they're talking about. So if you're going to interview in Clayton, you need to know what this is and you need to know how to teach in that way.

So like if we can find partnerships like that to help us with, you know, Pre-teaching candidates. And then thinking about, like, my colleagues in other districts are talking about similar things. So it's not, you know, I'm on panels and courses and that kind of stuff with other colleagues who are at the same position as me, and we're all sort of talking about the same thing. I would say we're a little bit further ahead in our thinking and, like, the development of our tools than some of our neighboring districts might be, but we're all talking about the same stuff.

Right. So I think it's going to start to be more of this sort of trend in education that I think Nisha's talking about versus the content piece. The other thing I wanted to say about the content piece from the high school perspective, I had an interesting conversation with an AP teacher. AP is kind of an interesting thing to me.

So people who teach AP, I feel like it's very content-driven oftentimes. Because they're preparing for a test. Right, and they're preparing children for a test. So this teacher, their approach to teaching at the high school this year is a project-based learning approach.

So a very empowered approach, driving questions, very deep things. And I said, so how are you dealing with this tension related to the test? And I thought their response was a really interesting response. Their pedagogy is this problem-based learning approach.

When they get to the end of the unit, their assessment actually looks relatively traditional. But one of the exercises that they have the students do is, all these things that we've learned, how would College Board turn that into a test question? And I think that's a really interesting way to work with the system of AP and the test as opposed to continuing to fight against, like, I'm preparing the kids for this test. So, like those kinds of stories, if we can start to think about those in different ways, and start to think about, it's, the goal isn't really about the test, but the goal sometimes kind of is about the test, right?

But so we can start to think differently about how we're teaching, then we're teaching beyond just what they're doing for that test. Carter, what are you thinking? I think I know who that is. I'm trying to figure out, like, there's something that's different, but the one that's mine.

Okay. I just wanted to say, too, I really like the website where the teachers can go on to share ideas and get ideas for how to do some of this. I think that is key to getting this done. And I think even bigger picture than that, I mean, as you know, when teachers can collaborate like that, and even online in that way, it helps them feel supported and encouraged and a sense of belonging from teachers.

But I love that you keep this living document where they can go for ideas or share ideas. I think that will help the whole process for sure. Because if anyone's stuck, they've got somewhere to go. So that's great.

Last question. Is there a consultant that does this type of work somewhere that we tapped into? What would be the cost to do a mass and like? Yeah, when we brought George Kuros in last year, that was sort of our kickoff to this was his sort of approach to thinking about education.

He's very involved with the portfolio piece and everything like that. He's not cheap. And to come in and work with us for an extended period of time, it'll probably price its way out of what we can do. So we capitalize on our local resources.

So he's training you all, like, folk, and then you all go down and administer what you learn. Yeah, so Nisha and I met with him initially and had some initial conversation. He then did something for our entire staff to sort of, more than anything, I think his approach was sort of this mindset approach of, like, thinking differently about how we approach learning and thinking differently about how we collect evidence. The other person that the district that we've worked with within the district is Joanna McKechn, who's actually in New Zealand, so we only work with her virtually.

But she's, I've shared some things with you all before of hers. She had a book about measuring human potential that gave us some of the ideas of our continua for the profile pieces. Spervantage of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried So there a couple different sort of organizations or schools or people The Stanford D. School is probably the most, from my perspective of what I know about schools, probably the most empowering school site for students and seems like a pretty awesome place.

Right. So we feel like anything we can learn from them will help. Gotcha. Thank you.

And Jason, I just want to say I do appreciate you always bringing in that accountability factor. You know, I've always said, yes, we could say, we just said it earlier, right? We need Shrek to serve the best places to teach. We have the best teachers, but we all have improvement, right?

We need to grow and we need to be like, okay, be reflective. Thank you. That could be part of an improvement plan that we have in our process that we put in place. But eventually, you have to have that conversation.

And that's empowering our principals to have that. Giving them all the tools to make sure that our teachers are supported and successful. And we want them to be successful, right? Because they're the ones that are going to make an impact on our students, hands down.

And we have phenomenal teachers, but we all have places we can grow. Sure. Thank you for that. I think another sort of thing I can say about this issue of accountability is just based off of my own experiences.

This method of teaching is pretty infectious among teachers. My main experience with this was in eighth grade, which is when my science teacher, Mr. Crook, sort of did like, he took this and really ran with it. He brought like 20 kids in to design our curriculum and then we were doing projects the whole year.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Is Mr. Crook on your subcommittee? On my learning cohort?

No. So the people that I chose, he's on a path with this. So the people that I asked were like, they're in varying places on a path. So no.

So Carter, just so you know, Mr. Crook is the only teacher where one of my boys has said, I would like to be the one out of using my own allowance money to buy the end of year teacher gift. Because he's my favorite teacher that I've ever had anywhere. He's a really good teacher.

That's said often. It was said by my childhood. Gary. I just have one.

I know we've talked about this a lot, but I just wanted to make one point. I don't exactly know how to say it, and it risks sounding like giving us too much credit for this. I don't mean it to be that way. But I really appreciate the fact that these words that we spent a long time putting together in the strategic plan, the short version, you know, a place for everyone to grow as learners, head and heart, it's like 12 words or whatever.

But also the goals, too. I mean, I can't tell you when we wrote these words and when we talked about these words, we'll commit to the educational growth of our learners through an equitable, personalized, individual learning experience. I don't know how I was going to tell you whether you did that or not. But I really appreciate the fact that there's a process here of trying to define what that means and to take what we helped to come up with, take it back, and as professionals and experts, give it life and give it some things to actually see if it works or not.

And I just, I was very excited watching this because, and this is the part where it starts to maybe sound a little too self-congratulatory, I felt like what we did actually made a difference in what you're showing us you're doing in the classroom. And that what we supposed to that how we supposed to help is like set sort of a big picture vision and then let you all run with it So it felt really good to me I mean I hearing everything about let go faster let get it to more I want that too, but this feels like evidence that we're actually really trying to do this in a professional and a thoughtful way. So I just appreciate that. Okay, several things.

The pace part of this, I think our district is already doing in several areas, and in some areas it's easier than others, in math, for example. I think in science it can be really something that we do. So just offering different classes. Okay, so I know that this is happening so well at the family center.

I know that it's all these things. Pace, all of them are happening so well in the elementaries. It's harder as we get to the secondary level. And I'm just wondering if more classes like math, like physics, there are several, biology, so many classes that can really give kids the choice of pace are out there.

And maybe we also have classes that you don't have that option. Thank you. But they aren't maybe required, and then maybe one day all of them will have pieces of it, right? Like you said, it's a slow process, but it's exciting to think about.

And I also just want to say that, like I said, in the Family Center, they do this. I saw the Family Center really teach the elementary schools this amazing philosophy based in, you know, their research, what they've done with learning with these youngest learners and what's worked. They did tons of outside research, and they came into the elementary schools, those teachers who were experts now, and really taught. And that's why I think we're seeing a lot of this in elementary schools.

And I think we can just keep, it makes sense to keep doing that. Take what the teachers that have experienced and have learned, and continue to teach them that, you know, go to the middle school, go to the high school, and sort of pass on the knowledge that they've learned with our youngest learners, which tend to be, you know, their newest learners. So they're really moldable, you know what I mean? And so now it's like, okay, well, how do we, you know, take this into these students that haven't done this ever, you know, and learn from those students, you know, what we, the great success we've had in the younger students.

And then the last thing I'll say is education is slow. Totally fine. There are lots of slow things in this world. If we're going to talk about empowered learning and we want to talk about one thing we can do tomorrow, I'm going to throw out there.

Thank you. Have a policy at the high school that would really eliminate the idea of a screen being anywhere near the student during the class so that they can have these empowered learning situations that are just, they have no other option. They can't look at the screen. They have to communicate with others.

They have to think about what they want, their pace, their, I just want to throw that out there because I do think as much as we say all these things, these kids grew up with screens. And in order to empower them, I think part of that has to be taking them away in order to learn in a way that is traditional and that is collaborative, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm just throwing out that one step. Maybe that one thing we could do tomorrow could also, you know, help you with this goal, too, of empowering, you know, empowered learning.

Carter, what do you think? I think, in theory, it makes sense. I think it would be hard to get students on board with it, though. And I feel like unless they're committed to it and understand why, I don't know if it would have the exact same effect.

There's a pouch at the front of the room. Yeah. Schools like Burroughs and stuff are doing this and they seeing great things I sure you know that Melina Talk to Y about how this year goes But it becomes a norm It becomes a norm It is we are Thank you The more they're getting from a class because they spent the 85 minutes thinking and talking versus someone that spent half of it possibly on the phone, that's empowered learning when they realize, okay, this was, I got a lot. This was, I actually, I feel the content of this now.

I digested it in a way that I hadn't when I had this distraction. There has been significant conversation about cell phones. I know. At the secondary level.

Yes. And I've had several conversations recently with individual teachers that one of the things that they asked me when I go into classrooms to observe is like, can you observe that? Good. Like what's happening with students to see, like they're teaching.

They don't always notice what's going on in a child's life or something like that. And so I do think that that is a part of the conversation right now within our culture. I also think the increase in conversation came right after students were learning virtually and coming back into school. There were just sort of different practices that students had coming back into school when they were in our space versus when they were in their own space learning.

And so that has been sort of part of the consequence of why I think we've seen an increase in conversation about how we handle. Thank you. So I think that's part of that. The other thing I wanted to say about the part that you were talking about, about the influence of teachers from other levels in working with teachers, our professional development experiences, like our most recent professional development experiences that have gotten the best feedback from staff have been when we've designed them in a way that's empowering, and we've provided choice.

And we've asked staff from across the district, pre-K through 12, to lead breakout sessions, so like smaller sessions of interest, How does this look in your classroom? How could this look in a math classroom? How could this look in whatever? And people learning from one another.

Those are the times where people feel like they gain the most because they're allowed that choice. So it's the same thing that we're trying to model with the students. So we're modeling our professional development this way for a reason. So that you can see that it's empowering to you as a teacher.

I'm not saying all 500 of us sit in one space and learn in the same way. We're giving you 52 options. You don't have to give students 52 options, you can give them four. Right.

Or you can talk to Jason and we'll take care of it. There you go. All right, this was a great conversation. I appreciate everybody's feedback.

Does anybody else have anything? Thank you. Thank you, Elena. You're welcome.

Thank you, Jason. All right, so we're going to talk about our policy now. Professional staff recruiting and hiring, Jason. All right.

All right, good evening. So the policy being reviewed tonight for first reading is policy GCI, professional staff reassignments and transfers. This is an updated policy to clarify that a reassignment of an employee that changes compensation benefits or contract of the employee must be approved by the board. This change is not a result of the law, but it's based on concerns that were shared with MSBA that sometimes districts may be having these reassignments Any questions?

All right, great. The next one that we have is policy GCD, Professional Staff Recruiting and Hiring. So some of this does go in conjunction with the previous policy. This is an amended policy to reflect changes brought about by House Bill 604.

That's the one, if you recall, where we are now required to request information related to the applicants before we offer them the job to the most previous employer in the state of Missouri if they work for a school district. MSBA has also updated this policy to clarify that employee transfers or reassignments that change the compensation benefits and contracts of an employee must be approved by the board. This change, like I said in the previous policy, is not based on law but based on those concerns that were shared with MSBA with the board's legal role in hiring. Also, some language was removed that was very specific language around hiring retirees because there have been different exceptions made.

So that's on the school, the HR department, and the applicant to make sure that we're following the rules around PSRS and peers with retirees. Any other questions? I did have a question about that. Sure.

So the language about the retirees, it just said, I forgot, but as permitted by law. Did the law change recently? I feel like during COVID it did, right? They keep modifying it to make exceptions for like the national teacher shortage with COVID.

Yeah. Some of that was to aid with our substitute shortage as well. So right now, they have lifted the restrictions around the 550 hours maximum for retired teachers in PSRS, as long as they are serving in the classroom or serving as a substitute in the classroom. Okay.

I wasn't sure if that, like, changed just during COVID was temporary or if that was still. It's temporary, but they've extended it. But they've extended it. It's kind of changed a little bit.

That's why they keep, that's why they're trying to make this a little bit broad. Thank you. So, you're asking for broader to not have it so pinned down to specific scale. Okay.

Thank you. Any questions? Any other questions? I think you just need a date change on the bottom since it still reflects 2017 on the revision.

That's it. Where's that? Page six. You have, for some reason the semicolon is highlighted with the date.

Maybe that's the former revision but your other policy has 2022, today's date. Yeah. I think that's the date. Yeah.

I think that's the date. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. So, we're going to have a discussion on the next slide. We're going to have a discussion on the next slide.

Okay. So, we're going to have a discussion on the next slide. Okay. Your other policy has 2022, today's date.

This policy still has a date from five years ago. Okay, we will look at that. Thank you. That's a former revision.

Yeah. Is it on the last page? Yeah, that's the last time it was revised. And now the school board vacancies.

Okay, that's for policy BEE for school board vacancies. And basically all this is, is MSBA has updated the policy that like all new board members will do 18.5 hours of training, which is an additional 2.5 hours of training to what there Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Same thing on the date there?

Yeah. That's, they're always showing you the last date that it was revised. Got it. So when we adopt this, then it will change.

Okay, action item, Stacy, we need to approve that CRSWC budget. Yes, I move that the Board of Education approve the fiscal year 2023 CRSWC budget as submitted. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously. And our consent agenda. I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 9.02 through 9.18. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Questions? I don't have a question, but I just want to make a comment. Yeah.

I just wanted to thank Robin for all of these partnerships. I mean, this is like a huge consent agenda. But they all such great I sure it was a lot of work because these are all separate organizations but I just want to thank you for your work in doing that It a win really I mean it a huge win for us and our students But I just think any time we can create partnerships with outside resources is just so helpful and great So thank you for your time and putting it all together. I second that.

I third that. It looks like there's new ones now. It seems like, I don't know, I didn't recognize some of the ones, like Safe Connections? Safe Connections is one that we have had before.

I would say we're trying to really augment our relationship with them. They do some co-teaching and coming to do guest lessons as part of the curriculum experience in certain grade levels. And then we are also partnering with them to have a therapist come on site and work individually with students. And so they'll be carrying a small caseload for us.

So we're really excited about that. We're also excited that they are able to do more things in person now this year as well. Beautiful. This might be the largest consent agenda we've had.

I may have set a personal record. Yes. Go Ross. It's like an army bus bill.

I had to go through a letter of reason with this stuff. Are they passing this? Okay. All right.

Is everybody in favor of it, though? Yeah. Aye. Motion passes.

And let's see, are we going to approve our financials? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to get that.

All right, Stacy. The first one is for information only. Right. The first one is for information only.

Does someone need to present it? No. Okay. So I can read the motion for the second?

Yes. I move that the Board of Education approve July 2022 and August 2022 disbursements in the combined sum of $3,684,753.98. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Questions? All in favor? All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Commission passes. And public participation? Nothing?

Let's see, committee report or calendar committee. Education Foundation. Did Gary and Jason have a meeting? Jason attended the meeting.

We did, yes, and I was able to make it. You know, they're off to a strong start for the year. You know, they are really active in the food and essentials drive that we, that Dr. Patel talked about, mentioned earlier.

Her report, you know, it's, I just anecdotally, I know a lot of families, at least in my neck of the woods, participated in that. So that was good to see. And it sounds like they're getting geared up for homecoming. So they'll have the alumni barbecue.

I think Sugar Fire donated a lot of food. So it should be a good time. Great. Equity and inclusion.

Yeah, we had our first meeting. We're going to meet every month. It was great. The plan for this year is to look at data and be able to really take that data from all the surveys, All the feedback that the district has been gathering, which has been really great.

And make recommendations to various organizations, teachers, buildings, et cetera, based on that data that we're going to really dive into deep during the entirety of the year. So we actually took the first meeting to really talk about how to look at data and what biases you bring in and how to be more effective in using the data that we're going to look into. As well as then giving ideas and sort of stating to what areas we think we want to look at. Because you can't look at all the data from all the things that we have.

But we are going to try and focus in on a few areas, look at that data, and then see what we come up with in terms of recommendations for resources, et cetera, by the end of the year. So that's exciting stuff. And then I also talked, I went to the governing council meeting for SSD and heard all about our partnership agreement, which was great. The many focus areas that they determined based on this review that they did.

Yeah, that was a great meeting as well. And last but not least, I will just plug that the All In Coalition is, we have a new project coordinator this year She currently working her big campaign is on getting some yard signs out for homecoming It one of the biggest things that I think she the organization can do is to really promote safe Are you pointing at the guards? Ah, there we go. If anybody wants some yard signs.

I love that. Did you bring them? Robin did. Robin, thank you.

Robin showed tonight. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right.

So anyway, every parent in the district has had the opportunity to sign up to get one of these. But it's just such an easy thing. And I don't know how many have. It doesn't look like a lot.

But it's an easy thing to do for them to click on something. The coalition comes. They give it to your door. You put it out.

Then they collect. I mean, it's a great way to really get that message out in terms of safety around homecoming, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Social.

I like it. PTO Council? Yes, I was at the first PTO Council meeting of the year, which they call their Jump Start meeting. It's the first time they met in person in a long time, which was great, and it was a great turnout, and everyone was so happy to be there in person.

Some other good news was that each of the PTO presidents said they've definitely had way more parents this year volunteer to help with stuff. The last few years they were like begging parents to take jobs, and now they have lots of volunteers, which is great. You know, they talked about how some of these parents, like of second graders, haven't even been in the building yet, ever, you know, that kind of thing. Or eighth grade parents haven't been in Y-Done yet.

So everyone's like excited to be back in school and helping with stuff, which is great. Other than that, it was kind of a general get to know you introduction type meeting. They're cleaning up their budgeting. They've got a great treasurer who's got everything in line and Lily from All In Coalition was there as well and talked about the food and essentials drive and and I think it's great that they've partnered with the Clayton Police Department this year too because I just think it's great to have a community-wide effort.

That's it. That's it from me. What else? Parks and Rec.

I was trying to remember if we had that meeting before or after our last meeting. I guess maybe it was right after. Obviously we just got the update from our meeting with the Board of Aldermen about a lot of Santa Claim stuff. The other parts and rec things they're talking a lot about is their big master plan that's coming up and also what they're going to do with the ice rink project.

That's the topic. So what are they doing right now? Oh my God. They're still trying to raise a lot of money if you've got $40 or $50 million.

I don't understand where the money went. What happens to the money that they raise? There's a lot of pickleball talk. It is.

No, they had the money already raised. I know, I thought so too. I don't understand what happened. They even got, I thought, sent in to do the roof.

Yes. There was money raised, but... Where is the money that was raised? Well, some of the money was raised based on whether that...

Oh, it was contingent upon build, so the benefactors would do it? Are they going to tear down the building no matter what, or are they just leaving it? The building... Because I thought that was coming down.

Yeah, the building is coming down. I don't know when, but it has to come down to do anything new there. But I mean, even if they don't build anything new, I thought they were doing their thing. To do anything new on the site.

Yeah so a lot of strong feelings about that and whether the city just their finances and what money can be used for that and what can So there a lot of stress there for sure So there's some deadlines in terms of some of the fund raising and stuff like that. I mean, there was a contract, there were plans approved and a contractor hired and everything. It's so crazy because I was on Parks and Rec then, four years ago, and it was like, they were starting. Yeah.

Well, there are hockey organizations that are now approaching, like, the mayor and the city to say, would you be interested in partnering to build a rink with us if we raise part of the funding? Our own mayor in Clayton should be having some of those same discussions, and I'm not sure she's participating with. Well, her son used to be the Clayton High School hockey coach. So I would think she'd be interested.

But I know the Rockets are talking to Mayor Jones and others. I mean our high school, that was our high school home, right? I grabbed this from our high school team. And locker rooms.

We lost. So that's a lot. Thanks for the report. We're like jumping on you.

That's true. Oh! Where are the ice? I don't have the money.

You have hockey moms. You do have hockey moms. That's why. I understand.

So what, just tell me you understand. We're all just asking you. So what did, so what did slow it down? I thought, I thought at one time it was actually ready to roll.

It was. What happened? What stopped it? It also cost X amount more than it was.

Yeah, it actually cost more. With all the budgets? It was so slow. I mean, yes.

Costs have gone up, no doubt about it. COVID and the shortage of resources, that's real. But it sounds like they're starting from scratch almost, which. Pickleball also got very popular during this time.

The courts are being used for pickleball. That area is being used for pickleball. We're a school board. We have students who play hockey.

And last year during the hockey season for high school students, I think the JV hockey team practiced once in a month because we didn't have a home break to practice in. Now we practice at 10 o'clock on Sunday nights in Kirkwood. Yeah. Because that's the only thing.

So, anyway. Pickleball, schmuggel, wall. How about social emotional wellness? We learned fast.

Jason and I were both there. Yeah. Do you want to? I don't really remember everything.

No. We talked a lot about the homecoming coming up and the signs that were needed to remind children And adults, really, also adults, that was the emphasis, to not provide their children alcohol. What else was there? Well, along those lines, that I think would be of interest to everybody is Lily from All In said she looks at data, like survey data of high school students about alcohol use.

Right. And she came from Rockwood, I think. And she also looks at data from them and other neighboring districts. And the data shows that Clayton students are drinking at a much higher rate than other schools around here.

How are we, where is that data coming from? Students surveys. Ah, Carter. Is it accurate?

Carter. Carter. Carter's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah.

No, I don't want to put Carter. But anyway, yeah, it's basically student survey data. So a few other things I made notes on that we talked about were, you know, lunches aren't free anymore this year. That free lunch program stopped.

But Chartwells talked about how, and Robin too, that they're really on top of it. And they've accounted for every kid that may need a free and reduced lunch now that didn't receive it before COVID. And so they feel like all of the students that are needing that are taken care of. We talked about the no cell phone policy at YDOT, even at lunch.

And that, let me see what other notes I've got. Is that the policy in YDOT now? Yes. And that, oh, Robin announced that SSM will be providing a mammography day for Clayton employees, independence, coming up on October 14th at St.

Mary's, which is great. And she said they've been great to partner with. Oh, and one other thing that came up was that, you know, we give free memberships to the Center of Clayton to seventh graders, but a lot of the equipment and access there, you have to be over 14 to use. So the Center of Clayton representative questioned, I wasn't on the board when this happened however long ago, why didn't we come up with seventh grade to get the free membership?

When they're not even old enough to use a lot of the stuff. And the problem is that, is supervision. When those kids are there, they don't know, they're using stuff they shouldn't. They, well, like high school, even freshmen are 14, right?

And they're going over there at lunch, and they're not supposed to be using some of the stuff. And they're using it anyway, and they're using it improperly, and they can get hurt. And they don't have enough staff to teach and supervise in that free time. And so she kind of posed the question to us about why did we decide that it was okay to give, I don't know, free memberships to, I guess it's two separate things.

Free memberships to seventh graders when they're not old enough to use everything there. And second of all, maybe just talking about supervision there at lunchtime for our high school students that's gotten a little out of hand. I guess that's two separate things. But part of the supervision thing with our high school students is that some of them are 14 and can't do everything there anyway when they're there.

So I don't remember why it was seventh graders that was before my time that we gave free memberships to, but she said, she just wondered because they don't have full access at the center anyway. That's a good question. Yeah, and I don't know the history there. So those were my committees but I also wanted to Dr Patel mentioned this earlier but I did want to mention today Dr Patel and I were invited to Glenridge to speak to the first grade classes like she mentioned about leadership in our school community and the different roles of our jobs And we sat on a panel also with Dr Murdoch the principal at Glenridge and one of the other first grade teachers Spervantage Propriety and Equality Who picks what we do on field day?

But, you know, they're first graders. But it was really cute and really fun. And actually, one of the kids, Carter, asked, why do we have to go to school on Jewish holidays? And it reminded me because you brought that up earlier about homework.

So even the first graders are thinking about that. But it was great, and I was happy to be there. It was fun to represent the board there and talk to the kids about things. That's it.

That's great. That's all. All right. Anybody else have anything to report?

Gary? I think I'm going to text. You're afraid. You're afraid of what you're reporting.

I'm like, I'm never going to report. Okay. Gary, you ready? Yes.

I move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second. Please. All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed?