February 9, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

The social-emotional side and all of the things that happen at all the different ages. So our counselors continue to be fierce advocates for our students. They work tirelessly to keep all our teachers and administrators up to speed. And they've been a tremendous source of strength and stability to our students, their families, and our staff.

So I just want to thank all of them for everything that you've been doing to take care of the whole child during these complex times. And for all the times that you may have felt overwhelmed, exhausted, or discouraged and got up the next day to do your best on behalf of all of our students. While none of them were able to join us this evening, I wanted to recognize all of the counseling teams across the district. At Clayton High School, I wanted to thank Carolyn Blair, Marianne Modzalewski, Joyce Bell, Homer Turner, Jaislyn Cole, and Toby Smith.

Over at Y-Down Middle School, I want to recognize Mark Snyder, Liz Tucker, and Jason Thompson. Jason also serves as our curriculum coordinator. And I also want to recognize the elementary School Counselors, Anthony Henderson, Jenny Todd, and Crystal Taylor. I wanted to close my recognition with a special announcement.

Jason Thompson has been nominated for the Life Changer of the Year Award, a national recognition program that honors K-12 public school educators and employees who are making a difference in the lives of students By exemplifying excellence, positive influence, and leadership. His nomination makes him eligible to receive one of 17 cash prizes up to $10,000. Jason has made tremendous contributions to Clayton at the student, building, and system levels. And from building relationships with students to serving on several district committees, his impact is truly felt throughout our community.

So congratulations to Jason. Thank you, Dr. Wiens, and I will definitely echo everything that you said. We want to thank all of our counselors who go above and beyond every single day in making sure our kids are not only successful and thriving academically, but they're also meeting their social emotional needs.

They are the ones that our kids are comfortable going to and very approachable, and that's what we want. So thank you to all the counselors and a special congratulations to Jason. That's great news. And he's in class tonight, I believe.

That's why he couldn't be here. Terrific. Yeah, congratulations. And we appreciate all of our counselors.

Arguably, they have, you know, one of, if not the most important job in our schools because they are the ones that take care of our kids and their social emotional health. And without that, it makes it very challenging to learn. So thank you to all of them. Also, we are going to recognize James and LaDonna Sutherland, our basketball volunteers, at our February 23rd board meeting.

I think they were in a basketball game tonight. That's true. They were planning on being here, but there is a basketball game happening right now. So we pushed them and we'll be recognizing them at the next board meeting.

Terrific. Okay, so let's move on to Dr. Patel and Superintendent Communications. Great, thank you.

Good evening, everyone. So to give you an update, I wanted to, first of all, obviously, we've started February, so I want to make sure we acknowledge that it is Black History Month. And I wanted to thank all of our staff, our building administrators, Dr. Poole, for all Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

We are going to be working with our students every single day, and even if that's in the classrooms, through our teachings, through our learnings of black history, that is important. And when you think about it, just recently, there are bills that are being debated about black history and what are we teaching, what are we not. And I'm proud to say that our students, our staff, and our faculty, and our parents step up and make sure that we continue to do what we want to do in our district. And that is to make this a place where everyone belongs.

So I do want to thank all of our parents and just community members for the continued support in that. And it is from a personal standpoint, you know, my parents always, their favorite quote used to be the one that I remember from growing up Nelson Mandela you know and that favorite quote was education is the most powerful tool you can use to help change the world And that what we doing for our children And so as always I proud and humbled and honored to be a part of a community that embraces that So I just wanted to make sure we highlight that Secondly, I always give the COVID update. So January, the first slide that you should see up there is the one from January 19th that I had shared. At that point, our positivity rate was 4.15%.

The next slide is the one right now. And you can look at the positivity rate now. It's 0.23%. So we went down like 4.15%.

That 0.23% is even lower than what it was in December. So just like they predicted, you know, the surge came quickly, it came fast, but it also went down just as fast. The next slide shows, again, this was January 19th at our last board meeting, where the positivity rate was a little bit over 34%, and the next one is now. And you can see the dramatic drop in that.

The next slide is the daily new case rate, and the very peak was January 10th. And now you can see how much it's dropped. But when you look at that, it's still in the critical band. So even though it's dropping that quickly, we're still in that same spot.

And so we're going to continue, even though we've seen improvements in our numbers, we're just going to stay strong with our mitigation plan. It's working, and we're going to keep going that way. Okay, now having said that, we did make a few adjustments. You know, we've been talking to the Pandemic Health Task Force.

We've been talking to health professionals. They agree that we can move to the five-day quarantine, so we've started that already. Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Taking another switch here is the strategic plan.

So despite COVID, we want to continue to do what we do, which is teaching and learning best. And so one of the things I shared last time was the strategic plan updates that we've been giving the board. So tonight we're going to focus on goal two to make sure that we continue to grow as learners. So if you notice, February 9th, that would be today, you're going to hear the assessment report.

We already shared the report with you, the written copy. It was on BoardDocs, so everybody should have access to it. So tonight, Dr. Garganego and the principals are going to give you an update on it.

So one of the things I do want us to take a look at is the timeline for the state assessment. And I want us to really pause and really think about this in the past few years. The last time we had uninterrupted state standardized tests given to our students was 2018-2019. 2018-2019.

If you look at the slide, the next one, the next year, 1920, there were no assessments given. The year after that was when we had our students that were learn at home. We had some students that were here. The state required districts to go ahead and test those kids.

And they said you have to have about 85% completion rate. So even the kids that were at home, you've got to get them tested. So in our district, we had at the elementary level, so sorry, grades three through eight, we had 97.4% of our kids tested, which is great. And at the high school seniors, we had 99.4 or 5% tested, which is again, kudos to the staff here for making that happen.

So I say that because that is the data that we're going to be sharing today. And one of the things that the state has said over and over is that we cannot compare this year's data to any other data, as you can see why. Because there was interrupted learning. And so that's why I want to put a strong caution when you hear the information we get today.

We're not going to be comparing it to years past, but we do need some comparison point. So we going to look at the states what the state reported and we going to look at our students So we look at standardized data and then we look at our own local assessment data that we have And also one of the things I wanted to note on this timeline is MSIP 5, if you notice in this year, 21-22, we're transitioning to MSIP 6. So, MSIP 5, the Missouri School Improvement Plan program, has been in inception since 2013. So, it's about time we're getting to MSIP 6.

Now, I can say as superintendent, we were very excited when we heard we were moving to MSIP 6. We thought this is going to be bold, dramatic changes. But we can say it's a baby step. We're getting there.

We're getting there from the state level. So, IMSSIP 5 before was 100% of our points or a grade that we get as a district was from performance, right? How our students are doing academic achievement, graduation rates, college career readiness, etc. IMSSIP 6, which is a good thing for us as a district because we're already down this journey, 70% is now going to be academics and 30% is now going to be continuous improvement indicators or standards is what they're calling it.

And under that 30% fall things like climate culture data, school improvement plans, leadership, which means professional learning communities at the building level, even board leadership. There's an indicator on that. Effective instructional practices. So that's going to be part of IMSIP 6, which is, again, like I said, a step equity access, a step in the right direction.

I think we were just hoping for a lot more, but hey, we'll take this. So as I shared this with you, because when you hear the report tonight, we have a lot of things that we can celebrate in our district. Our students are doing really, really well. But we cannot sugarcoat and say that all of our students are doing well.

We have areas of growth and there's no doubt about it. And how do we get to those is what our challenge is, right? How do we continue to improve? How do we continue to grow?

And it's going to be getting down to the individualized, personalized learning, like going down kid by kid and putting interventions in place to make sure that they are getting better and better. So that is our reality, and we own it, and we need to move forward with that. And how do we move forward with that? That's the challenge.

And also to remember, yes, we have assessment data, but we also have the panorama data. So what you hear tonight is assessment, but we always talk about whole child, we talk about the profile of the graduate, and how does that panorama data fit into that. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Aitana to give the student report, and then we will go into our assessment report. Thank you.

So I wanted to also start off by just acknowledging that it's Black History Month and explaining some of the things that we're doing at the high school to honor it. So each, I think it's Tuesday and Thursday, a teacher has been going on the announcements at the end of the announcements. And for a few minutes, they just kind of tell the story of an important person in black history. And they explain their accomplishments and their impacts, which has been really interesting to hear.

And then at both the lunch periods, we've had music playing by black composers and black artists. And then another thing is that the Black Student Union has opened an apparel store to honor Black History Month that I believe is closing in a couple of weeks. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I think closer to the beginning of the year, so the cast of it kind of had to bring it out of the archive, I guess.

And they had a few rehearsals to practice it, and then they put it on again after a few months of not performing it. And then they also put on a deconstructed melody this past weekend, and they were still able to have three of their four original showtimes, because the snow days obviously meant that on Thursday night they couldn't have their showtime, And then lastly some other things going around are so in the high school library we have like these fun new Spervantage of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you.

Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I have to say this must be my lucky week because I've met with the entire principals and group like Monday, remember, 7.30 yesterday, DLC. Oh, thank you, Dan. He does remember.

7.30 meetings are perfect on a Monday morning. Wouldn't you agree? And then DLC yesterday, We have a meeting today and I think we have something else coming up tomorrow and Friday. Just don't make any meetings for us at 730.

So good evening. Thank you for letting us be with you tonight to talk about the annual assessment report. The purpose of this presentation really is to provide some high level data I provided much more kind of in the weeds data to you in the 70-page report I gave to you. But it's also an opportunity to provide some time for our principals to share their school improvement plans also with you.

And to talk about how these data that we're talking about within this report influence some of our thinking within that. But they're not the only thing that influences the thinking of the development of the school improvement plan. And so as they talk about those, I think you'll start to see the presence of our strategic plan and our profile of the graduate. So, I would be remiss in starting to talk about the assessment report without first talking about the pandemic and the effect on education.

And Dr. Patel talked about some of the things that I'm also going to talk about and reiterate within this piece. But in thinking about the effect of the pandemic on education, one of the things that I think is really important to think about is the fact that schooling and learning has been interrupted and has been significantly interrupted since March of 2020. And that during that time, educators and students have really had to be very flexible.

So flexible, like turning on a dime on how we're going to continue to educate children, turning on a dime for students on how they're going to continue to engage with that education. And then also, it's not just about being flexible around teaching and learning. It's also around So, the pandemic has really, while social emotional learning has always sort of been at the forefront, The pandemic, I think, has uncovered some things for us that have just created different opportunities for us to work with children and maybe to recenter some of our focus within that social emotional realm. The other bullet points on this slide are really related to things that Nisha has already sort of talked about.

So the idea of the states that the state suspended testing for a school year. And then when they had us test students last year, required all students to test on site. So not only we had a large percentage of our children learning at home, but we had to figure out how to bring them on site to do testing, which is not like an easy pill to swallow for families who, for whatever reason, are keeping their children at home. But like Nisha said, our percentage was really high.

But then also the fact that the state really cautions us on comparing these data sets because of the fact that learning has been so interrupted, because of the fact that people are just in different places dealing with the pandemic and dealing with the trauma related to the pandemic. So that created a little bit of a challenge for me in thinking about how to present data. And so before I go into the presentation around the data from the state, I wanted to spend a little bit of time about talking about how data can be deceiving. So what this slide, I'm going to walk you through a little bit of what this slide means.

But so when you think these are actually real data from the district. But what this slide shows you is in the first column And the first row, the 74 represents a number of an identity group within our population within the School District of Clayton. So 74 total students. Of those 74 total students, 31 of them are scoring in the basic range, which equates to 41.9% of that student group.

The second row shows another identity group within the School District of Clayton with a total of 315 students, 32 of which are scoring in the basic range, which equates to a 10.2% of that student group. So the reason that I bring this up is to say that when we look at data just as the right-hand column, so we look at things as just percentages, it tells one story. But when we look at the data just Just as the middle column, it tells a very different story. So I want to caution us because the way that I'm going to talk about state data tonight is really by percentages because of that's the way the state gives it to us.

But I want to caution us in thinking about those data to make sure that we uncover like really what the story means. So what I will tell you is that while in an audience like this, where I have to maintain the anonymity of children and really present things from a Thank you. Okay, so state data. So like I said, I shared that previous slide with you to provide some context, but also I tell you that I don't have a brilliant way to present this any other way.

So like I am admitting that what you're about to see and what you see on this slide really is percentages. And so I will walk through that with you. Another thing to note about the way that sort of historically I've presented state data to is oftentimes we've made comparative statements not only within our own population, but to other school districts. The state did not give us access to that information this year.

So I will not be so like even if you had questions about that, I can the best I can tell you is there was an article in the post about it. And that's the only data that I know sort of comparatively within other schools. So I think there is like this piece of being protective of the fact that like we are in the middle of a pandemic. And what this information says to us is just supposed to help us as a system to understand sort of where our kids are at this point during the pandemic.

Okay, so I've belabored that enough. So when looking at state data at our overall population, so this is overall student population, our ELA, so our English Language Arts, percent proficient and advanced, I needed something to provide context for you related to like just looking at our numbers, what does that mean? So the context that I'm providing to you is the state information So in comparison to the state so the total population of students with So what you see within the state and the population within Clayton what you see on the English language arts slide the mathematics slide and also the science slide is that our students are doing really well So our students are surpassing the percentage of proficient and advanced throughout the state. Most significant to note within these three areas really is elementary science and high school math.

Those two places felt like they really stood out to us as things to celebrate. The other thing that I want to point out on this slide is around high school science. So when you were reading the report, you may have noticed the same thing that we noticed, that Dan and I have talked about related to that percent. The 48.8% doesn't feel like a normal percentage for us of proficient and advanced.

We have a couple of theories of practice related to that. One has to do with the fact that the state test for science changed in 2019. So we really only had one other data point before that for this. Also, because of mitigation practices and school building closure, our instruction in science was one of the content areas that was kind of significantly impacted.

By not having students learning in the lab. And so we have a theory of practice that that could have had a pretty significant impact. So while it surpasses the state percentage, we think that, like our thinking is moving forward. So when we test the biology students this year, that we're not going to see that same dip.

So if we do, then I think Dan and I feel like we have to have a different conversation. But that's that piece. The elementary science piece from the other side of The first part of this is we felt like that was really something to celebrate. Our theory of practice to that is that we just recently made a change in the past couple of years pre-pandemic to shifting all third, fourth, and fifth graders to learning all science in the lab with a science specialist.

Prior to that, we had a classroom teacher. The classroom teachers were teaching part of the science curriculum. And so we think by making that shift and having that cohesive curriculum, three, four, five, that we're seeing this impact in the data science. So we're celebrating that piece.

So then when we look at student groups by race and we start to look at these different identity groups, we again see that the district percentage of proficient and advanced is higher than the state percentages. One of the things that I want to note and one of the things that you may have noticed in the report and what I'm trying to do with my language is the state has often referred to these identity groups as subgroups. We feel like as a district that that language is deficit language. And so we are trying to use the language of student population groups or student identity groups.

So you'll notice us trying to make that shift within our presentation. Oops, sorry. Hold on. I don't know how to go back.

I got all excited. Okay. So then this is also the percent proficient in advance for students who participate in different programs such as the Federal Lunch Program, Special Education Services, EL. Again, those students are scoring higher than the percentages within the state.

And then this is the student population group. So these data represent the combined group of Black African American students, Hispanic students, students who are English learners, students with an IEP, and those qualifying for the federal lunch program. So while these are above the state average, the difference between the state data and the district data is really the smallest difference than any other identity group that we have within the district. Okay, so state data share one story, and these data often prove to be difficult for us to respond to in isolation of other information.

So we get the data after students have been promoted to another grade level. We get limited information on each student, and this assessment is one data point on one day. So within the district, we have a significant assessment Matrix of localized data that help us to triangulate information and then to make instructional decisions for groups of students and for individual students. So while in the report I provided you with a whole lot of information and like a big scope, I tried to do some things a little bit differently within this presentation to give you a little bit better perspective because I feel like I have a little more control over how to present these data.

So this is our students as readers. So in the report I shared charts with you outlining the majority of our students in each grade level are meeting the benchmark set by FastBridge But our work is not done with just one data point for each student So growth for us is something that really important for us to track with students throughout the system. So annual growth, sometimes it's within the year, multiple data points for a student. So what I want to sort of walk through with you of what this chart says is that and I'm just going to talk about the second grade line And then each of the other ones replicate in the same way.

But in second grade, so our current students in second grade, the students that we have two data points on for reading is 130 students. So that does not mean that that's the total population of that grade level. It's just the total population that I have two data points on. So the fall of 2020 and the fall of 2021.

So, of those 130 students, 28 of those students were scored below the benchmark. So, then the next column over is to say, of those 28 students that scored below the benchmark, between the fall of 20 and the fall of 21, how many of them made growth? So, 26 of the 28 students made growth. So, a significant percentage of students made growth.

So, that's a big deal to us. And then the last column is to say in the fall of 21, how many of those 28 students moved out of falling below the benchmark? And it's 14 out of the 28. So while the majority of students made growth, only half of the students made enough growth to move out of the below benchmark piece.

So then you'll see the same represented within each of the other grade levels. So then this takes us a little bit back to like my slide about percentages and how to read percentages. So I wanted to try to then accurately describe to you what's the makeup of those students. So sticking with the grade two line, of those 28 students, what was the percentage of these identity groups that represent those 28 students?

So of the 28 students, 57% of them are white, 10.7 multiracial, 3.5 Asian, and 25% black. So what's interesting to us about these data is in second grade, third grade, and sixth grade, to a certain extent, those are mirroring our, to a certain extent, those are mirroring our total population. So like we have about 60% of students in our district identify as white. And so 57% of those students who are scoring below basic.

So it's like a proportional piece there. So these were interesting data to us. Fourth and fifth grade, obviously, there's a challenge there, right? So it's sort of like the reverse is happening.

It's disproportionate for our black and African-American students. So then this is math. So similar thing, but now you have to look at different kinds of numbers. So on the NWA map, when we look at our data, our average student score in each grade level surpasses the norm.

And Clayton students, when reported as a total population, are showing more growth than the norm. So our students, when reported as a total population, are growing at a higher rate than a year's growth. When we look at that then by racial identity, Clayton Black and African American students are scoring above the norm in fifth grade. Asian, multiracial, and white students in all grade levels that are represented in this chart.

So they're scoring above the norm in all of those. So each time I have a blue column, that's not Clayton data, that's the norm data. I was trying to distinguish that for you. So this was the winter of 21.

Then the fall of 21, these data look similar with black and African American students above the norm in sixth grade. And then my last chart for this is about growth again. So while I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about growth because that's our goal with children is to help them grow academically. So when you look at this, the growth of our students disaggregated by By race, all of our student groups are outpacing the norm data and growth, except our black and African-American students and our Asian students in sixth grade.

What I want to my disclaimer on that is and there's a star on grade five. The test changes between grades five and grade six. And so it is not unusual for us to see a little bit of a blip with just population in general on that test. So that is not as concerning to us as maybe it might feel or sound because we have to sort of take into account the change in the test You up Yeah, do you want to wait until the end or do you want to?

Just real quick, just to put it clear, if you could tell me what is the difference in that test, fifth and sixth, what's the change? It's just a different structure in how it, so the questions are the same, but they amp up So we have like a K-2 version, a 3-5 version, and then a 6-plus version. And the 6-plus version, the reason why it's different is because it starts to present more algebraic kinds of concepts into it so that the kids, because it's used as a growth assessment, to continue to show growth with students so they don't cap out. So if we continued to give the 2-3-5 assessment, students would cap out.

They just wouldn't show growth anymore. There's one more question. So, those black and Asian students that, right, in sixth grade that it was kind of, is that what we said? Yeah, so it's black and Asian students are not showing the same growth as the norm.

Why would it affect, like, black and Asian students, like these two ethnic groups? It's actually affecting everyone. It's just that the, when we see, like, so the growth of all of our students is not the same growth, So, we're seeing growth, but what we're seeing is negative growth with Black and Asian students in that instance. That's cool.

All right. All right. So, kind of focusing more specifically, I think the interesting thing, too, is that I'm looking at a lot of the data that Melaina went through. They look different from grade level to grade level based off of, you know, different identity markers.

And in our professional learning as a district, you know, we kind of want to honor that. Usually a lot of professional learning has to do with we're going to concentrate on one group. But the needs and, you know, the improvement areas in that group could vary and change from grade to grade, year to year. So a lot of what we're trying to do is really put a huge emphasis on that individualization in terms of our professional learning.

So pretty much we're using our students in terms of knowing who they are and humanizing their experience each year and adapting our practices to our students. So, you know, one term that we've been using in a lot of our professional learning sessions is figuring out who our blind spot 20 is. And that's kind of looking at the theory that, you know, our education as teachers has, you know, given us the, you know, the ability to maybe serve 60% of the students that we, that are in our presence. And then maybe our life experiences give us another 20% on that as well.

But each year there's usually about, if you're looking at each classroom, about 20% of students that we're not reaching. So who are our blind spot 20 and using, you know, the data that we have looking at, you know, our panorama data, looking at our academic data, figuring out how to do that. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Customize and come up with individual plans for 20 kids.

What's like that's not necessarily the case. There's a lot of kids that are being served from the things that we already have in place. Let's make sure that when we're individualizing, we're individualizing for that blind spot 20. And through individualizing for that blind spot 20, we're still able to create benefits for the students that are already being served as well.

So, and looking at a lot of our professional learning, it's really focusing on the idea of individualization and understanding who that blind spot 20 is, how we can get the necessary data, whether it be academic, whether it be social emotional, whether it be just based off of personality. You know, how are we gathering as much humanizing data as possible? So, a lot of our professional learning days from a district standpoint have really, you know, gone into individualization. Okay, who are my students?

What am I focusing on? And what are the different areas that I need to work on in order to meet those students? So we've had like an array of choices and menu items, you know, ran by teachers and educators in our district, you know, who do things well to be able to, you know, put on professional learning sessions so that not only are we individualizing our Professional learning for each teacher, because each teacher has different needs, but by doing that, it's giving them the opportunity so they can individualize for each of their students. And then on top of that, as administrators growing in the We have culturally responsive coaching.

So when these things come up and we do have conflict and issues that come up with, you know, the students that we have a blind spot for, how are we as administrators coaching our teachers and giving them the, you know, the necessary knowledge to get back in the classroom and, you know, improve upon the performance with those students. So that's been a huge focus, especially within our professional learning within our district leadership committee. And then looking at, you know, we do a lot of things great, you know, from a macro level in terms of, you know, different things that we implement. We're looking at the micro inequities that happen when we have to make a decision at the blink of an eye when a conflict happens or if a teacher is in the classroom and one thing they say or do could put a situation on one end of the spectrum versus another.

Really working on combating against those micro inequities on that role to individualize them for each student. So that's kind of where we are from a professional learning standpoint. So then these data that we provided to you tonight really provide one story about our students. And the district, when we were writing the strategic plan and developing the profile of the graduate, really started to look at competencies beyond just the academic achievement that we felt like we value within our learners.

And as the state transitions from MSIP five, Thank you, Madam Chair. Of the work of the state and it makes me feel really good that we're in this place of like already starting to talk about this and starting to really think about how we value these. So some of the standards that are clearly connected to both of our profile, the graduate and the strategic plan that the state is looking at are things like beginning in middle school, students demonstrate collaboration, leadership and communication skills through participation in curricular, co-curricular, extracurricular, community-based activities. Or the school system ensures opportunities for students to develop initiative and engage in collaborative problem solving.

So you can see that there's clear connections to our strategic plan and the things that the state is starting to look at how they're going to also look at our accreditation piece. So one of the ways within our system that we connect the achievement data and the strategic plan and the profile of the graduate is through the development of the school improvement plans. So the principals will each share a different aspect of the school improvement process. Because we already shared the goals with you, we didn't think it would be purposeful to sit here and go through each goal with you.

So each of the principals is going to talk about a different aspect of our development of school improvement, or they're going to focus on one component of their specific school improvement plan. But you have access to all of the goals within your piece. We, okay, that's all I'm going to say. So I'm going to hand it over to Jen Martin first, Principal at CAPTN, to talk about overall just sort of the development of the school improvement process.

Good evening, everybody. I'm going to start with a question of what does it mean to be learner-driven? And I'm going to share with you a quote from George Kuros, Representative, Dr. D'Arnaud, who you may remember, came and kicked off our professional learning with all of our staff members at the start of this year.

And he writes, We cannot forego focus on our strengths for the sake of only emphasizing the areas where we struggle. But that's what happens time and time again. The deficit model compels educators to overcompensate in the areas that need to be fixed. When that occurs, all the great things that are already happening are quickly forgotten.

The bottom line is, an environment where the message is always, we are not good enough, can be demoralizing and counterproductive for all stakeholders. And that quote comes from the book, Innovator's Mindset, written by George Kuros, which is a book that all of us have, as administrators in our district, have read this book and engaged in the work from this book. And I chose that quote to start this evening because that was pinnacle in shifting my mindset in more traditional ways of developing a school improvement plan process and the way that we mirrored our process to the district strategic plan. And so I going to share a couple more quotes from George throughout my time with you this evening but I like to start just kind of speaking in general terms of how we may develop and work with others to develop our own school improvement plan It is a collective effort that begins with the end in mind While each building conducts an autonomous process generally speaking the members of our building leadership teams or visioning committees begin by reviewing the district strategic plan As a means to evaluate our current effective practices that we want to ensure continue to flourish in our buildings.

Engaging in a review of practices that are instrumental in developing the characteristics of a profile of graduate helps teams to establish priorities using a strength space model that builds on success. Teams are also tasked with evaluating less effective practices that may need to be revised or eliminated, determining potential gaps, and developing goals to address these concerns that are targeted and learner-centered. Holding our students at the center of this shared decision-making process is integral to establishing specific action steps that are strategic, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Kuros also states that savvy leaders understand the need for innovation and as a result constantly reinvent their organizations.

After teams have developed a draft plan, other stakeholders are invited to provide input regarding the revisions designed to answer some of the following questions. Are the goals we are proposing in the best interest of our students? How do these goals improve learning? Is this serving all of our students?

And what do we need to stop doing to ensure we maintain these goals as our current priorities? Before a plan can be finalized, universal assessment data, including but not limited to, A reading, NWEA, MAP, and Panorama, is reviewed to ensure the building school improvement goals are in alignment with the needs that are represented in our data. These data sources are then incorporated As ways to monitor and measure the outcomes of our future successes. While often school improvement plans are written to transcend a minimum of one year's time, the leadership teams continue to revisit and monitor goals and action steps throughout the year, making necessary adjustments in real time, ensuring the learner-centered approach.

Before I hand things over to Beth, who will talk about how our educator growth plans Connect to our building school improvement plans and the district strategic plan. I would like to leave you with one final quote from George Kuros. Change is an opportunity to do something amazing. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Jen. Good evening, everybody. So I can't reiterate enough how the global pandemic and the circumstances that our teachers and students have faced because of it has truly broadened our educators' understanding of how to best respond to individual needs, right?

Our students are needy in normal times, and this has not been a normal time. Responding to their needs remains priority number one within each of our school settings. I can assure you that here in the School District of Clayton. So the educator plan for student growth, right, we can say educator plans for growth.

They can grow, right? But this is an educator plan to ensure that our students are growing forward. It's one component of a teacher's yearly evaluation cycle that asks teachers to form a plan in response to assessment data that they've collected within their day-to-day interactions with students. In creating the plan, the teachers identify a group of students.

They devise action steps that often require change within their teaching practices. They formulate a timeline to complete the plan, a timeline, and a means to assess students' progress thanks to their actions. Plans can be administered by an individual teacher or a team of teachers. Plans can be as little as six weeks in length or as long as the entire school year.

We hope that they get initiated after they really get to know the students in their class setting so that they tend to get launched sometime around October. This year, a little bit later than that. I still pushing on a few of my teachers I know they get there So overall the educator plan for student growth helps our teachers to further examine their practices be responsive to student needs and account for student growth As building administrators we review these plans with our teachers We offer encouragement We offer suggestions We determine what professional development might support their abilities to best meet their plan This often means tapping expertise over building coaches and encouraging coaching cycles The plan is written in two parts Part A provides the hypothetical. If I do this, then I expect this outcome to take place.

Hopefully the outcome of increased student growth, student success, right? Part B of this plan I think is most fascinating Because it's a spot where teachers can really get authentic with recording their reflections, uploading data, be that standardized or classroom level or a combination of both, and to record the growth and determine whether or not that plan is really working. So a hypothetical is just that. When you put a plan into action and you realize, well, these action steps aren't really producing the outcomes that I was expecting, then you should, along the way, take pause, reflect, work together, change your plan, right?

So last summer, my building leadership team referenced the district's strategic plan, our profile of the graduate, in order to refine this three school improvement goals that you see written here. From that, we really encourage that teachers take a look at their educator plan for student growth, a requirement that every teacher has in our school setting, to align their personal goals for learning within our goal areas of our school goal, and connect that to our strategic plan and the profile of the graduate. So to further enhance their growth within the school improvement plan, professional learning time has been allowed for educators to meet in learning teams. We've affectionately titled them Goal 1 is Equity, Goal 2 is Innovation, and Goal 3 is SEL.

They're abbreviated names for each of our goal areas. We then, within these teams, have paired up to form accountability partners with one another to examine collected data. This could be an accountability partner of a teacher who's at the fifth grade level combined with a teacher at the kindergarten level who are at like areas that they're working toward to try to grow their practices. To help further, I'd like to highlight three examples of how an educator plan for student growth and the assessment data that's collected, and particularly the action steps that teachers put forth within that plan, they commit to taking these steps, align with what we're talking about here, the strategic plan and our building improvement goals.

At one grade level team, they got together after the initial start of the school year and determined that their students' social-emotional toolkits needed some amping up. We're coming off of a pandemic back into an in-person school learning year. At the start of the school year, they found that overall, these students demonstrated, in comparison to their last year's group of students, these are veteran teachers who've worked at the same grade level over time, That the students, in their opinion, were really having a heavy dependence on adults to solve really pretty minor problems. They saw a greater inability to regulate emotions from their students, and that the reactions that the students were displaying often did not match the size of the problem that they were reacting to.

Less empathy toward peers. You know, growing a student that has empathy toward others is something that we have in our profile of the graduate, and they noticed that. Our panorama survey data around self-efficacy indicated that overall this particular group lacks some self-confidence as compared to like groups in years past. And such was demonstrated in their overall ability to take risks.

So that's just a team of teachers talking together and determining what steps they needed to take in order to solve that. The assessment that they collected were the panorama results. They also found rubrics on empathy and flexibility. Rubrics that's in student-centered language at this particular grade level could help students account and make aware of, you know, what would I need to behaviorally do in order to start demonstrating a personal growth within these skill sets relative to the needs.

At Glen Ridge School, we also often reference our three goals for life, the three goals that we think are needed to grow up to be great citizens. You know, it's okay to have emotions. It's just not okay to get in trouble for them, right? Can I still be productive and hardworking?

Can I do the right thing even though someone next to me is doing the wrong thing? Can I be okay when someone's not okay in my presence and still be a productive learner? And our third goal for life that we talk about frequently is I can be productive and follow directions even if I don't want to or if that direction is too hard for me, right, the willingness to be vulnerable in front of their peers. So our students know that language.

Teachers talk about it often. And so they took notes on that and conferred with them. They then asked students to self-assess, giving themselves their personal scores on their ability to be flexible and have empathy toward others on these rubrics That became their pre Teachers worked through a number of steps with the building counselor to come in and offer some lessons literacy coaches math coordinators because our goal is within every content area to grow these skill sets not just within like a half hour of a school day which is a challenge I really commend them for taking it on Students themselves committed to a personal plan. Teachers led whole group instruction.

If any one student didn't quite move forward with the plan, they met with them individually to further confer and help them move forward. That's one example. I've got two more. Are you with me?

Good. Example number two, another team of educators. So this I found fascinating. So they had some personal inspiration relative to some professional learning they had done over the summer.

And this idea, you know, as a district, we're hoping to empower our learners and grow them, super engage them in the process, right? The question that they raised was relative to could they as educators truly help their students better formulate better questions or formulate better questions as they were interacting with one another? They had done some research from some cool researchers and found, or I think they did a mashup and created this pre-assessment tool that is called a question formulation technique. And so they used this as a pre-assessment and also looked into research from a book called Just Make One Change.

Educators essentially teach students to ask their own questions. All right. So after taking the pre-assessment, the students in this group then were tasked with tabulating the number of questions about any given visual prompt. So this is all kind of from their language.

I'm trying to make it briefer. I'm trying. I'm trying. Not easy for me ever.

Hi, guys. So they then, they had this visual prompt. They categorized the questions by question type, either open-ended or closed-ended questions. It was then determined that of this group from the pre-assessment, 39% of the identified students could use some help in this area.

They could benefit from additional instruction on how to ask and formulate better questions. The team determined that the students below an average of this pre-assessment could grow their scores by 3 percentage points by spring break. So they're still in the process of taking data relative to this. They did things as teachers to implement teaching lessons relative to types of questions and then practice those questions.

They also provided students with vocabulary and examples of useful questioning strategies, emphasizing the importance of asking the right questions to increase student success when they were problem solving. All these problems combined together offer opportunity for self-reflection related to risk-taking and really a student's metacognition toward developing better questions as they themselves are learners in the classroom. All right, a third example, around reading. Not so easy to get into the heads of readers, right?

But our educators each day really do a fabulous job striving to learn new tools around the art and science of teaching reading. So this example offers the idea was after the teachers administered the A reading, right, what Melina shared about, they got that feedback. Teachers' college benchmarks is an assessment tool that we use as well. They took anecdotal observations relative to conferring notes, watching students engage with their just right reading level.

And then also reflected on students writing about their reading. The start of the school year, this team of teachers opted to pull in their reading specialist team at Glenridge because they believed that the data that they were collecting indicated that students in this grade level particularly are showing up and showed up with some significant gaps in their ability to make just right book choices, their abilities to show independence as readers, and their ability to think about their reading, which often shows up in their written reflections. The goal that they have had particularly, and they still have for this group, is to see them move to the next reading level, which also introduces students to a next band of reading, text band reading. So we have reading levels, and if students can master into the next band, then we know as educators that their opportunity for even explosive growth, accelerated growth, there's a greater opportunity to get that happen.

So we often have to get students over that hump in order to move them forward. Other action steps included working with our literacy coach and their specific primary or intermediate Reading specialists to begin goal setting, setting up some work. Work also around identity. Melina mentioned that reference to the terminology that we're using more and more in our class setting.

You know, what do students identify with as readers, themselves personally? Do they see themselves in the texts that we're providing them? Are we ensuring that as educators in our work? We introduced a strategy group structure for this particular group of students to focus on using their identity, To select appropriate books and the students' use of reflection as a personal tool to promote their growth.

They broaden their instruction to include specific reading skills as a way to maintain independence, increase their student stamina around reading and their engagement with the text that they were given to read during independent reading. Teachers Incorporated Exit Slips is a way for students to make their thinking visible, to help monitor student progress and see what adjustments were needed to their plan and their course of action. Their intended outcomes, they're expecting students to apply strategies that they've taught during whole group, during small group, during one-on-one sessions. And they're asking them also to really reflect verbally or in writing about the strategies that they find work best for them.

Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Like four weeks later, three weeks later, and then really celebrating their success and progress individually as readers. So in summary, I'll summarize here. I have found that the educator plan for student growth is a concrete way for our teachers to examine data, respond to the students before them, collaborate with other educators, and ultimately support students' success and their forward progress as learners in our classrooms.

The action steps associated with plans like those that I highlighted here tonight, they offer insights as to how teachers connect with our building goals, connect with the district's strategic plan, and right now really connect with the attributes listed in the profile of the graduate. Now I happily will move this microphone to Patrick Fisher, the principal of Miramac. All right, thank you, Beth. And thank you for giving me just a few minutes to talk about our school improvement plan.

As much as, similar to what everybody else has said, when we started this over the summer, we looked at some of what the district had been doing with regards to their strategic plan, as well as the profile of a graduate. And to kind of start, there's a quote that's actually in our strategic plan that says, we use the profile to shape the direction in the strategic plan, influence our approach to learning, and challenge the mental models Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. What do we want all students to know, understand, and be able to do? How will we know if they know it?

What will we do if they don't know it? And what are we going to do if they already know it? When we receive the profile of a graduate and a lot of the goals from our strategic plan, what that's doing is that's redefining question number one. When we say what do we want all students to know, understand, and be able to do, it can no longer just be a reading and math goal.

It also needs to include self-actualized and critical thinking and global citizen and collaboration and all of those other components that we now have to think about, which means we need to take a step back and start looking at what are we doing as a school to make sure that we're starting to ensure those things. So for us, this meant essentially three different things that kind of fit with those three goals, which match with each of the goals that came from the district strategic plan of a place for everyone to grow as learners in both head and heart. And so we have addressed, you can try to address it through those lens. The first part is very similar to what Cameron was talking about.

So looking at this from how do we start to especially if you think about self and you think about some of those things we going to have to bring in students We need to bring in student voices We need to start seeing our kids and actually designing lessons with our kids in mind Not having lessons and trying to fit the kids into the lessons, but thinking about how do we start to humanize our lessons and designing lessons and structures with our students in mind. So that idea of humanizing, and Cameron mentioned the curb cuts, which is actually, there's a video which discusses curb cuts Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Spervantage, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

So it's hard to determine if we have it until we've actually built some of those models. And so this year, a lot of it has been thinking about what are the systems that we may need to change? What are the lessons we may need to change? And it's actually about building it and learning and growing it before we can start to say, yes, it's there.

Yes, or what the impact actually is because we don't have the tools to measure it just yet. So but I'll give an example as we've been kind of going through this. It's specific to one student. Spervantage, P.A.G., and the Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. How can I help others and myself learn? He wanted to be able to show what he was good at. And so then they identified some of his skills.

Instead of just using the general reading intervention materials, she was able to pull some books around his interests, found literature, found things that spoke to just this one student and brought them in for him. And then they also carried this over into the classroom. And so then he was reading those books to build his own passions and his own interests. Superroportionate Proprietary and Proprietary The group of kindergartners because he also helping them learn their sight words and helping to formulate letters So and then like I said again this is also not just in the classroom So the classroom teacher started adding bringing this stuff into her lessons so that as they writing and doing things there he able to kind of start to see this So what we've seen with this is not only some growth in both his reading and math, but he's also a kid that now comes in and his teacher, I mean, she did, she came in with tears in her eyes, said, you know, he was like, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality. The next slide, please. So, we have a lot of students that are going to be successful. We have a lot of students that are going to be successful.

We have a lot of students that are going to be successful. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. The next slide, please. So, I guess we've looked at this, it's been about how do we start to take a step back and think about what does it really mean to be successful if our goal is that profile of a graduate.

And I'm going to now turn it over to Dr. Jordan. Thank you so much, Patrick. So our school improvement goals at Y-Down directly related to the three strategic goals.

And as we started off when we were looking at those, before we started writing the action steps, we really wanted to dig into what those goals meant and look at the data more as a jumping off point. So for example, we looked at the panorama data and we saw that we did pretty well except for in one area in sense of belonging and about 59% of our students said that they felt a sense of belonging to school. So it was a considerable difference than the other pieces. So we felt like we needed to look into that.

But we need to know what they were actually saying. So like we sent the counselors on to tours to like listen to the kids and get some more information and go deeper into that. Because as Patrick was saying, like listening to the children, we felt was really important to develop that. Then as that And actually as an administrative team, we, Doug, Trita, and I took a step back and we really thought about where our teachers were coming from.

This is probably the hardest year and a half in education that we've seen in a generation. They were coming to us at the beginning of the school year not like they had in previous years, not really rejuvenated, not really ready to go, not really sure of a lot of different things. So we felt like it was important for us to take the same response that we do for some of our students to do for our teachers as well. So, we really set the priority for teachers to really make sure that they felt balanced and they felt like their emotional needs were being met and they felt safe and secure so that they had the capacity to grow and learn as well and then turn around and do what they needed to do for kids every day.

Because if the teachers weren't healthy and ready, it would be hard for them to do what they needed to do moving forward. So we took that same process with the teachers and we did listening tours around with the teachers around what they needed to learn how to do empowered learning, which was one of the strategic goals. So we had Janet Cruz and Kathleen Fogarty, who are a part of our instructional team members, sit down with every team in the building and ask them what they knew, what they needed, where they needed to be. And we didn't do it as administrators because we wanted the teachers to make sure that they felt safe and secure to share all different things.

And they did. They shared all different things. They came up with some really great items. Some were really easy check off things like we need to know about Adobe Spark to be able to do this.

Some were a lot more difficult in thinking about their own safety. Some were a lot more difficult in thinking about collaboration time and how we can find time within the schedule for them to come together. But the listening tours definitely gave us an idea of where we needed to go and what we needed to do So we kind of came back in the middle of the year and as Patrick said this has definitely been a process that has been growing and evolving throughout the year We haven't hit the ground running in September. But we came back in the middle of the year with some feedback from both our teachers and our students and then started to develop very specific action steps as we went forward on what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go.

And we have seen some successes. We've seen in regards to the teachers, we're seeing teachers kind of their passions reignite. We're seeing them finding their own like grassroots way of collaborating with each other, science and math teachers coming together to teach lessons on their own time. We're seeing problem-based things happening in theater tech where they're designing lessons where they can, the kids actually come up with QR codes.

So if you're ever at the White Island Library or the theater and you don't know how to pull down the screen, you can scan this code. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Thank you.

Spervantage, Bord of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. They have different, a profile, sorry, a portfolio with all the different aspects of the profile where they have contributed their own work to look at those different things because that's what's really important as we move forward and really looking at those parts, which is great to hear that the state is also mirroring some of those work as we move forward. So we are knee deep in the work, but what we're really hoping and changing than we've done in previous years is we're not trying to throw just new programs at teachers and at kids and say this is going to be the program, but we're really looking at how we can elevate the people in the building to transform themselves so that that changes. Thank you, everyone.

I don't have a quote. I didn't realize that was a prerequisite. But tonight I'd like to focus on our CHS goal number one and how we use, talk about how we use assessment data to inform our work overcoming barriers to educational equity at CHS. And we all know the research is clear that all students benefit from a rigorous educational experience and we're working to ensure that all students have an opportunity for an academically rigorous experience at CHS.

One of the areas of our focus in our work this year and in previous years has been to make sure that the demographic profile of our students in our honors and AP courses is representative of our overall student body. And this work has involved looking at the course recommendation process and the registration process and removing obstacles to enrollment in many of these courses. Superroportionate, P.A.C.E. More of a word of mouth you had to kind of ask, and it was kind of only by request that departments talked about that.

Now, also, social studies is open. All the students take the same course. English, for all intents and purposes, is open enrollment. And we were looking particularly at math and science and how we are more transparent about options that kids have.

And so one of the other things that we did was we also engaged in, well, we reached out to individual students and families that maybe didn't register for an honors or AP course that we thought were certainly academically capable. We did some additional cohorting of students to eliminate the isolation that some students felt by being maybe the only African American student in a particular honors course. And then we also have continued our work with our affinity groups for our honors and AP, our African American students in honors and AP courses, which has been really, really successful. Spervantage, P.A.T.

Our work this year has also involved the use of new data points to help inform recruitment and enrollment decisions, specifically the use of the PSAT data and the AP potential program. And I think a few years ago before COVID, I had mentioned this in one of the previous I think it was one of the assessment reports, but the AP potential program was developed by College Board as a way of identifying students for AP courses. And basically, since College Board administers obviously the whole SAT series, the PSAT and the AP courses, they have a wealth of information that goes back decades actually on individual student score profiles. And then they've created an algorithm that identifies based on a student's individual score profile, their likelihood of earning a 3, 4, or 5 in any given AP course.

And it's specific to the various subsets within the PSAT series. So basically they have this database of literally hundreds of thousands of students to calculate a student's likelihood of success in these AP courses. And then this program can be used to identify academically capable students to enroll in AP courses who may just need a little encouragement to do so that maybe we didn't identify under our normal circumstances. Now, prior to 2019-20, we've given the PSAT for decades.

The PSAT was administered to 10th and 11th graders at Clayton High School, but it was on a fee basis. So the only students that took it were those that came and paid their 20 bucks and signed up for it. And realistically, the motivator for most students was simply basically the National Merit Scholarship competition. And so typically in a given year, we'd have about maybe 50% of our 10th graders would take the test.

And for them, it would literally was just practice at, you know, taking the PSATs for when it actually mattered the following year. And then our junior class, typically we had about 75 or 80% of our kids took the test. So I started, as I became more familiar with this AP Potential program, I started taking some of our data and kind of running it through the program and looking at the profile. And I thought, you know, this could be a really handy tool, actually, in kind of helping with this goal one.

What I quickly realized was that the data set was pretty incomplete. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. All kids the opportunity to be involved in the National Merit Competition. It didn't rely on one's ability to pay or one's choice to do so.

It also was going to give us a great data set for all of our kids that we could use to help with placement decisions. Then COVID hit. And so while COVID did disrupt our testing plans for the past two years, I am happy to report that this academic year will be the first year that we've had the complete PSAT series administered. So by March the 2nd of this year, we will have given the PSAT 9, the PSAT 10, the PSAT and the SAT.

We will have administered all of those this year to all of our 9th through 11th graders And so not only does this decision like I said give every student an opportunity to participate in the National Merit Corporation it going to provide a wealth of information on each of our students and their statistical likelihood of success in specific AP courses Each department head has had access to this information, like I said, these limited data sets in previous years, but we're looking very forward to the fact that we'll have a complete data set on all of our kids that we'll be able to use moving forward. And so this assessment data has become an invaluable piece of data for us and will make a direct impact on our school improvement work moving forward, and we're very, very excited about that. Okay. What questions do you all have for us?

Come on, people. I know there's some questions. Go ahead, Joe. Well, first and foremost, I want to say fantastic.

It all seems really great. You know, it's interesting. I yesterday and today I spent some time with the Annie Casey Foundation with system education leaders, juvenile justice leaders, child welfare leaders. And we were talking about kind of a dual pandemic, right?

One of COVID and one of institutional racism. And so I guess I want to put that question back to you all, right, which is I think this is awesome. And I hear that it's going to take some time, but you've got to balance the urgency with it's going to take five years, right? Because the gaps are unacceptable.

I mean, they've been so, it's like 40%. And I know, I understand, it's only one piece, right? We want to look holistically. We have the whole child.

Thank you. If we had come to this board table 15 years ago, the gaps would be the same. 10 years ago, 5 years ago. So, like, when and how are we going to really make some progress?

Joe, I appreciate you bringing that to the forefront because that is, you know, we can say, and that's what I started off with saying, right? We can say we're great in a lot of things, but we're also, we know the current reality. And I wish that if there was a book out there that was written that says, this is how we close the achievement gap is what some people refer to it, then it would be a bestseller. Like it really would.

But, and I've also said this to a lot of people in this room, we have to figure out a way. I mean, we can't just say, yeah, we're getting better, we're getting better. We have to figure it out. And I wish we had their answer.

But I know that I can tell you that these individuals and everybody in this room is committed to trying to make it work and figuring it out. But we have to. Can I say something to that point? I want to say pretty much the same thing Joe just said.

So I hate this mask. I feel for you all, because, I mean, we're going to look at the data, and we're going to see these huge gaps, and African American kids continue to suffer. And I'm not even really sure if it's suffering, but they're going to continue to lag behind other students, other ethnic groups, when it comes to academics, based on this data we're looking at. But, you know, I feel for you all because we're also in this highly politicized environment.

And I'm not sure if you all discussed that or not. I'm sure you all, maybe you would do amongst each other quietly. But, like, we're in a tough environment. And I remember when I first came and sat down at this table, I was pounding the table at you all.

Thank you Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried How many different strategies we come up with to create some ways to reach children I mean it just tough man You know, I don't even, I don't know what to say. I'm not, you know, this is not a giving, I'm giving up type of thing, but this is, this is taxing. This is, and for me as an African-American dude looking at it, like, I'm like, and I'm competitive too, right? And I'm looking at it like, damn, we are really lagging behind.

This is like almost embarrassing. Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Like, on the SAT, not PSAT, but the SAT, that statewide, the state did like 10% less, or was it like 10% less, or like, were like 10% better than the state on performance-wise. And the page is, let me pull it up real fast.

Sorry about my mask. This mask is getting on my nerves. Sorry, guys. I support the mask, though.

I think you're talking about on page 17. Yeah, where it talks about, like, we're at 1210 and... Our average score is a 1207, the average state score is an 1159, and the average national score is a 1005. Right, right, right, right.

So can you speak to that data right there? It wasn't concerning to me, but it was interesting to me in terms of, you know, we put a lot of emphasis on our education, we do a lot of different things in our school district, But statewide, we were not that much better than the state, right? 1207 versus 1158 or something like that. So one, one, one, we probably have the same thought.

One, one part to think about with that, and this, this also happened to us when we were a school choice for ACT, was that we test 100% of our population. The state does not test 100% of the population. And in the Midwest, the SAT is not generally as popular as the ACT. And so what you're looking at is kind of what Dan referenced related to his piece of like a limited data set.

Because you're using people who are choosing to pay for the assessment themselves versus us as a district saying we are going to pay for 100% of our population to take the test in 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade. And so it does alter what that data set then looks like. And I would also say, too, it also has changed a little bit, but historically the ACT was very Midwest-centered or Midwest-centric, whereas the SAT was used by more of the highly selective schools, the Ivy Leagues. A lot of the East Coast schools at one point were exclusively SAT.

The net result, though, is when you're looking at Missouri's results, the kids that are generally taking the SAT are generally going to be your higher performing kids that are looking at higher, more highly selective schools. Not exclusively, but they definitely trend that way. So when you're comparing our mean or our average, you're comparing our average for all of our kids with like a higher than average group of students from the state of Missouri. Gotcha.

Would you agree? Okay, so going back to the other point, the former point we were talking about. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Superroportionate the two ethnic groups are showing negative growth Thank you Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I don't want us to make really big sweeping generalizations based on that one cohort of students on one line of data. Well, that's where I was going. I was actually doing that.

I was doing just that. And I was saying to myself, like, this says a lot about testing in general. This is a small sample size, you know, very myopic or very small, right? But like on a more larger scale, what does it say about testing in general?

Right. But this is bigger than you all. I mean, this is cultural. I mean, I'm sorry, this is community-based.

It's a whole thing going on here that you're fighting against trying to get kids to learn, but the test may not be fair in terms of how it reads. And then it might, it's a bunch of things without me having to say things and get myself in trouble. No, but I agree with those statements. So that's what I think when we think about the progress of, like, if you think about how the state has always factored in accreditation for districts, so any district within the state of Missouri, it's always been about performance things.

So performance related to performance on tests and then graduation rate, attendance rate, et cetera. So this movement that I was talking about within this of like movement of saying some proportion of our accreditation being focused on this continuous improvement piece allows us to report data differently than just on standardized assessments. There's plenty of research out there to say that standardized assessments have a level of bias. I think this direction that the state is moving and the direction that we as a system, I think a lot of what you heard from the principals was, yes, these data points mean something to us, but they can't be everything for us.

And the more that we can focus on an individual child within the classroom and what their success is and what their growth is, not just measured on an assessment, but their success and their growth related to our profile of a graduate, their success and their growth related to being good humans. I think are the things that we have to continue to focus on. So I'm cautious to not hide the testing data because it's a piece that's there and it's a piece that's going to factor into how the state sees our district, right? And it is an information piece, but I don't think that it should be, you know, I always use the term like it's one data point on one day, but it's also like one data point on a test, right?

One test that's written by a company that gets money, right, to do these tests. So I think we have to be cautious in that sense, too, of like how we look at those data and to not put so, like to not overly emphasize those data, but to think about the other sort of human side of things that I think the principals did a really nice job of like saying. Those things are important to us. And as a district, we've said it's important to us because we have this whole profile of a graduate related to it.

That's a good point. That's a good point. So let me just ask you this question. Because we're basically saying, and I'm dumbing it down, we're basically saying that these tests are slightly biased, right?

Thank you. Really long and amazing. No, it was really good. I appreciate it.

But I'm saying, you all were trying to highlight that tonight, right? But it's like we have one foot in this game of wanting to do transformation and change, transformative change. But then we got our other foot in this old antiquated style. So my question is, when are we going to step up and say, let's get our foot out of the mud.

Spervantage, Are demoralizing sometimes of these kids. They're like, they're trying their butts off. And they get, like, I know I'm putting the work in, you know, and I know I read that question the way I read it. And yet and still I got it wrong.

My question is, like, when are we going to take, you know, this is not rhetorical, I kind of want a response. But like, when do we take our foot out of the sand and start moving forward in a different direction? Uh-oh, you about to tell me I'm off in the wrong deep end? No, I just wanted to kind of, I had a thought that was sort of along the lines of what you're saying, and so I just want, if they were going to answer your question, I was hoping they would answer this too, because I think that you said it really artfully when you said this is not just a Clayton problem.

Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Do you guys know of a school district that has done this successfully? And if so, have we gone to visit them or are we collaborating with other places that have had more success than we have? I'm not faulting us at all, but none of us in the room really have the answer.

I don't know, there's some school in Waco, Texas that allegedly closed their achievement gap, and some science school in Chicago that purports to have closed their achievement gap. I don't know, maybe they have the magic recipe. So I'm wondering if, go ahead. Well, I think from a charter school path.

I think the school is 100% . The test scores are among the top and the superior to Clayton. They start off in kindergarten with 200 kids per grade, but gradually the class is 45. So what happened?

Where did all that 160 kids go? Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And, you know, as I think as we get older, we realize we want to graduate, I'm sorry. We want to graduate successful citizens whatever that means But I think all of us as we gotten older know that you know there are lots of however you measure it successful people who may not have been, you know, 4.0 kids, but they have had very successful, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

As opposed to, you know, how well you can really do trigonometry or algebra or, you know, for most people, I'm sure there are engineers that that is a crucial skill. But for a lot of people, it's probably not as critical a skill as certain other skills that they've developed. I was really fascinated by the story of Merrimack for this young student who maybe was struggling with reading, but they were the kid that could sort of bring people together. What an amazing talent that is.

I guess the question is, how do you assess that? How, and, you know, it would seem to me, you quoted, and I agree with this, I don't even know who quoted, who says it, you know, what gets measured gets focused on. You know, so the problem is, is that we have these tests the state give us, that gets measured. But, you know, in life is ultimately your ability to do, you know, these higher level math skills.

Is that a good predictor of being a great, a successful person? Or would some of these other things? I don't know how you would measure them. I'm sure there are creative people who have thought about that.

So that seems to me, down the road, if we could figure out, now maybe this other test. I haven't been on the new board long enough to hear about, what's it called, the panorama, to see, I don't know if that's measuring that, these factors. If there are other types of assessment that address that, that we give or could contemplate giving. So that's kind of a long-winded thing, but I think it addresses Joe's comment.

And I came on the board in 2001. We weren't videotaping it back then. We could have shown the same videotape. The numbers haven't changed in 21 years, which is sad.

But maybe that says that we're looking at the wrong thing, which is not to say that all kids obviously need to read and write and do basic mathematics. That's a long rant to compliment Joe and Jason's rants. I had one technical question for Dan. Back when I was on the board before, we implemented this ACT for all effort.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. So yes you exactly right We were ACT for all and we paid for the ACT test for all kids we made the switch to SAT Quite frankly the ACT had their I call it their testing series which was the plan the Explorer and the plan which then led up to the ACT What we found is after administering that for quite a few years, the Explorer and the plan really weren't particularly helpful in preparing kids for the ACT, and there was no real predictive factor involved. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage, Pursuit, and I have a lot of disjointed notes here.

Sorry, something's wrong. But a lot is what I guess I should say. I don't need to repeat what my fellow board members have said about the achievement gaps, etc. I do want to reiterate, though, that I appreciate the anecdotal data that you shared with us because it does show us that there are other ways to assess the whole child.

And when we look at the profile of a graduate, those, like you said, are we creating successful and empathetic and kind humans upon leaving us? And I think that, so I'm glad to hear that we are also collecting that type of data because we know that, as you said, Milena, these tests are not the only indicator of a child's success. So thank you for sharing that. There is so much data in this, there are so much data in this report that I do want to ask, even though, like you had said, Milena, and the state even said, you know, don't compare it, there's a whole, this is hugely affected by the pandemic.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. It becomes much more complicated with the state piece. So, yes, there's comparative pieces, and I gave you a little bit of, like, the thinking related to, like, the science piece of sort of how we've started to think about, hmm, like, we need to keep an eye on high school biology.

Because that piece, even though, like, yes, I can compare it to 2019's data. Like, yes, it's lower. But I know I'm not supposed to. But then when I look at it in comparison to, like, where the overall state average is, it's like, hmm, that's concerning.

So Dan and I have had conversation about that. Chuck Collis, the science coordinator, and I have had conversation with that. The coordinators work with teams, work with principals. I work with principals to look at this.

The principals work with their teachers to look at these data. The challenge a lot of times with the state data has to do with the fact that it's so late when we get it That the teacher who administered the assessment no longer has the student when the data come in And so we talking to the subsequent grade level about data on students that they may have just met and everything And so there a little bit of like trying to I want to be careful in how I say this because I don want to minimize the importance of it But there also a piece of like when we go in and we talk with teams there a little bit of like spending some time like yes let look at it Let's very quickly move to the individual students and being able to look at that to say, are there students that you're surprised by what their data look like on the state assessment? So like that's a first place to start. So if you have a student who's traditionally relatively successful within your classroom and is scoring basic or below basic on the assessment, that gives it like that gives us pause.

So then what's the next piece of data that we're going to triangulate with that? So we start to look at the NWA. We start to look at the Fastbridge stuff to say. Are we seeing those same things happening on all standardized assessments?

Are we seeing those things happening on classroom assessments? And do we need to intervene? Sometimes it's just a question of like when kids sit for a test that that doesn't sort of correlate with what their performance looks like in the classroom. We're going to lean more towards the performance within the classroom to say these are the like it.

I don't want to I don't want to have our teachers Intervening on map data if they're not seeing that same thing within the classroom. So like those are the conversations that we're having. Our professional learning community, so our teams of teachers, being able to dig into that, but also comparing it to like it's a way of us looking at it as almost like a litmus test or some sort of test to say, curricularly, are we teaching the, like, so maybe we're putting emphasis and standards that we feel like it's important to put an emphasis on that. Standard.

But then when the tests come back, we're seeing a pattern with students. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to change our emphasis. It means we're going to have a conversation about that to say, do we still value this as a really important standard that we're going to prioritize, even though it may be at the detriment of another standard, because we feel like in the progression of a course or something like that, that's a really important thing, like a foundational skill to build on. Yeah, thank you.

Yes, that makes sense. And one other thought I had while listening to you all tonight is if our goal is really to assess the whole child, and part of that is the standardized tests, both locally and the state level, part of it are these other, you know, the other data points we talked about, which are, you know, the empathy and the culturally responsive and all of those other characteristics. If our ultimate goal is the profile of the graduate, right, that our graduates leave us with all of those characteristics and becoming good humans, have we, and I'm not sure how this would actually look, but have we thought about following up with our graduates to see, like, truly are they, I mean, have they become the type of humans that we, you know, we're hoping they become, you know, which is really the goal if we're talking about our graduates. I mean, I guess our, you know, we look at the senior class, but I don't know.

I'm just wondering, and I don't know how that would happen, but. We actually have created a survey, like a, you know, with all the competencies, and then we administer, our goal is to administer that to all the graduates and say, as you left the school district, do you feel that we were able to accomplish X, Y, and Z? I think that would be valuable feedback, yeah. Thanks.

All right, I promise not another rant. That's out of my system. 30 seconds. Yeah, okay, 45.

This is what I want to say. I want to say on the positive side that I really deeply believe that a focus on relationships, a focus on social-emotional learning, a focus on equity are the foundation for academic success at a whole different level. So I really believe, even though, even notwithstanding my rant, that we're on the right path. So I want to say that.

I also, though, want to say one other thing very quickly, which is I think we still go to the traditional school districts that we think of that are similar to Clayton, the Ledoux's, the Kirkwood's, the Parkway's. And I would just encourage us to look at some other districts because there are some districts that are getting two years of growth in one year that are that are knocking it out of the park at a whole different level than Clayton is, quite honestly, on relationships, equity, et cetera. Superroportionate, and so forth. And locally, locally, I work with them, right?

I work with them. That's what I do for a living. And there are some nationally, too. And so I just would encourage us to broaden our horizon beyond Ladue, Kirkwood Parkway, et cetera, because there's some districts that, you know, that may be We don't think as our traditional academic peers, but they're actually quite better than us and in some other ways.

So that's what I would say. You know, so going back to this, you know, me saying earlier that it's, you know, it's bigger than you all are doing a lot and what Joe's offering up by looking at other districts that are doing great things as well Thank you. We have a high poverty rate. And understanding how there's an impact, there's a correlation somewhere with how this learning process is happening when they come to these schools.

Even people like myself who are from the middle class, right? And still, we still have some of the same issues. There's some kind of issue that we need to be examining in these conversations that we're having So that we're having, you know, I guess better outcomes when we're putting together this data and strategies to have an effect on these kids. So, you know, I would love to see that.

And I could talk all day about this, honestly. It's just, once again, it's just rough to see. It's tough to see this data. And there's another thing I was thinking about.

You know, there's also a certain type of stress. Maybe we're trying to do too much. Maybe we're trying to, by trying to change all these things to make sure that the African-American students are up to par, maybe we're causing stress in a different way. You know, causing some kind of, you know, people not to be so turned on about school Thank you.

And looking at racism and systems and inequities. It's looking at the entire picture and asking ourselves the questions, what are the things that we can be successful at? And what are the things that are the biggest hurdles? So as we look at standardized testing, we don't write the tests.

We don't create the tests. We don't set the standards. We don't say, hey, this is how we measure what a good student is and what isn't. What we can do is as students approach those situations, we can understand them and put them in the right mindset.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. We get into whether it's our curriculums or standardized tests or all those things. What are those things that we can control? So when we look at having a more diverse teaching staff, mentally that's a boost.

Even applying for this job. When I saw there's somebody that looks like me on the board, that instills a little piece of confidence that goes in. So when our students are coming in, how can we empower them? How can we get rid of those small environmental defeats that strike them each day?

When we look at the likeness in which our school was built, schools are built in the likeness of the majority of the people that they serve. And if you don't fit that mold, that sense of belonging piece is going to be a bigger obstacle that we have to conquer. So how can we minimize that? So all of the, you know, the elements of imposter syndrome and all of the elements of, you know, I don't see myself in the curriculum.

I don't see myself in my teacher. I don't see myself in my peers. How can we create a coach, a cultivative environment to where kids can have the confidence? And I think in the story that Patrick was talking about with that student it was saying okay we could sit this kid down and get all the phonics you know resources that we can and try to make sure that they can read on a better level Or how can I give this kid the swagger and the confidence to even when it is difficult in his mind, he thinks he can conquer that.

And that that equates to higher points on tests, higher points in performance if I have that confidence. So what we're really trying to work on is figuring out with each individual kid, how can we figure out what makes them tick? And if we can figure out what makes them tick, they can have more resilience towards combating all of the systemic barriers that are there. I can't end racism.

We can't end racism. But I can give the mindset, I can make kids more culturally aware. I can make them aware of their surroundings. I can create a better sense of belonging.

So that's what we're trying to do. That's untraditional. The traditional way is, hey, we have disproportionate scores in certain subgroups or student groups. Let's sit them down.

Let's read this book and let's give them a different type of curriculum or some level of phonics that makes them learn better or that will catch them up. And we're trying to get away from those traditional things. It's like, OK, here are our barriers. Here's what we can conquer and what we can't conquer.

So let's let's look at the things that we can conquer. We can instill more confidence in our students. We can create a better sense of belonging. So if they come in and they they feel like their best selves before they go up against whether it's a test and assessment or whatever that might be, they're in the best shape to be able to handle that rather than when they step up to the plate.

They're already beat up and defeated. That's going to account for points on that. So we're taking a nontraditional route with that. So everything that everybody talked about, our strategic plan, there's nothing in it that's saying, hey, we're going to read on this higher level.

We're going to do this academic thing. So I think really what we're talking about and what we want to do, that's what we're working towards. But again, we're talking about trying to end systemic racism, you know, to a certain extent. I don't think we were just, I wasn't necessarily saying that we're trying to end systemic racism.

I was saying that there's a broader, systemic racism is a broader issue, right? And although you're, I did acknowledge you all are doing a lot of stuff to help children out that are having tough times. I think what I'm trying to say is, we're still accepting this old antiquated style that's having a negative impact on children when it comes to taking tests, when it comes to these outcomes and these data points that we're looking at and these metrics. Because at the end of the day, no matter how much we sit here and say, it doesn't really matter, we're not trying to look at all these different things, we're trying to look at a more broader subset of metrics, right, to say these kids are going to be successful.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. So my question is, when are we going to say, since we know that the tests aren't fair, right? Do we agree that the tests aren't fair? Does everyone agree that these tests that we're talking about aren't very fair?

I mean, I'm just asking. I want a little response here. Right? You can disagree with me.

Do you not or do you agree that the tests are not very fair? Agree. All right. I know you do.

Does anyone else? All right. All right. So if we know that the tests aren't fair.

What does that mean that, which is what was articulated, that there are cultural biases to the tests? Right. Right. Which would mean it's not very fair, especially when it comes to points being scored, right?

We're talking about 40 percent versus like 70 percent, right? African-American students being like understanding it, whatever the rate, whatever the numbers are. I'm just going to tell you right now that if you were a student and if you were a kid in the class, you'd be sent to the principal's office for taking your mask off. Oh, I know, I know.

Sorry. But do you understand what I'm saying? So if we know that these test scores are biased, then why do we continue to go on this same road? When are we going to do something different about that?

Jason, I think you referred to that when you were talking about this problem. Superroportion O levy agenda motion carried No doubt about it But when I brought that that slides up right there right The state requires school districts to have certain standardized tests So when I said we were very hopeful the superintendents got together, we had committees, we were saying, okay, here's a new chance. Incept 6 is coming around the corner. It's going to look different.

It's going to be bold. It wasn't. They gave us a little bit. They said, okay, instead of 100% of your points, you get 70%.

But you still have to do the same tests. And that's a bigger than us, that's a state level requirement, right? But we can, as a school district, and if our community is ready for this, and say, yes, we'll go ahead and perform and take these assessments, but we're also going to measure the competencies. And that is, we're going to give the students a GPA, and we're going to give them a CPA, a character point average.

Right. That makes sense. You're right. No, I got you.

And you did acknowledge that early on. It's just the long-term impact that that's going to have on a lot of kids, right? The confidence level on some of these kids, right? And what's more, all ethnicities at this point, right?

But then also including African-American students as well, right? It's going to have a major impact on their confidence, getting jobs, being productive, being the best they can be. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I want to share that, the comments about hiring. I mean, that doesn't mean that we are where we want to be, but we have made some major moves where, in terms of the inclusion effort, I mean, we've talked about this stuff for 20 years, but we're actually doing something now. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, you flick a switch and all of a sudden, you know, things are different. But we've made a lot of changes, and.

We have. So I don't, but we also have to be cognizant, you know, we're part of the state and our parents. I mean, my guess is if you said to the parents, oh, we're not going to test, you know, the state said we don't have to. We're not going to, you know, a large part of them would be quite upset.

They want to know, you know, what kind of, you know, they like to see that little chart that showed Clayton way above the state of Missouri. And so, you know, we have to balance our total communities we belong in. Yeah, but the question is at what cost is that little pretty performative chart, you know, and what cost is it going to have on our students, on our population, right? And no matter what, we're still continuing to go down the same road because no one's – and look, Anisha, I'm going to be honest to you.

Thank you. I just want to see some true conversation around, because this is the first time we've ever had this long of a conversation, and I know Amy wants to hurry this thing up, but this is the first time we've ever had this long of a conversation about something of this magnitude, and this is important. So I want to be able to see some major changes, have some conversations around the outside influencing, outside influences, how it's impacting what you're trying to do on a micro level and how it almost like two steps forward and like five steps back Every time you turn around you doing something great and then like here comes the outside again coming in here you know and ruining your process. Plus you're dealing with this institution and the things that you've got to adhere to on a state level.

So I'm going to stop talking, but I appreciate you all engaging me in this conversation or us having this engaging conversation. Gary, do you have anything to say tonight? I'll just really, really short. I do think it's, I'm as wanting to hurry things along as anybody.

You all know that, right? But I do think this is a really good conversation for all of us. It's not any easier than it was the first time I was a part of it. I will say that.

It's hard and it's uncomfortable. And I know it's uncomfortable for all of you. I appreciate your willingness to do it anyway. And I just want us to keep doing it because while we might not have changed everything yet, it ain't going to change if we don't keep trying, right?

So whatever that means, that's what we have to do. But yeah, that's it. I'm curious what Itana thinks. Itana?

It's hard. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's a hard, I'm glad that we're having the conversation. These are really good questions, and I appreciate everybody's willingness to engage.

I think that, you know, you guys just have such hard jobs. I mean, I can't even imagine. In addition to this, which is an issue that I certainly don't have the answer to, and I don't know that anybody here really has a good answer to, we also need to, you know, we have all different types of kids in our school district. You've got kids that are in the middle, you know, or what we call a kid in the middle, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Thank you. Again, this is a historical comment. The district used to be involved in a peer group, a national peer group. I don't know if we're still involved with the same group.

There was a school in Wisconsin. Spervantage, project blueprint. The blueprint. So we still engage with those school districts, Nat, on the same kind of frequency that we did before.

So we used to participate in like collective professional development with them and everything. We don't do that. We still use them like when we're making decisions, we'll oftentimes reach out to those school districts to say like where are you with this thinking now, et cetera. So those are the ways that we connect with them now.

I think that might be something that would be a creative exercise to think outside the box. That school district is sort of high demographics similar to Clayton. That was kind of how it was constructed. Upper middle class, relatively smaller school districts.

That doesn't mean that that would be what a new board might want to look at and say, you know, here are some districts really doing some interesting things in, you call it a GPA and a... CPA, character point. You know, some creative things and how are they looking at that and let's benchmark our I think we really learned a lot. I know when I was on the board, we learned a lot.

That was a source of a lot of creative ideas. That was my last thought. No, that's a good thought, and I actually have reached out to, I think, seven or eight different districts, and we're trying to work together, like, to come up with a new coalition of some sort. Of the seven or eight I've reached out to, six of them have said, thank you so much, but not right now, because we're in the middle of a pandemic.

And I said, well, okay, I have your name and number, and I'll be reaching out back in May, but we will get there. Okay, guys, everybody gets a gold star. Good job. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Can we take five?

Yes, we can. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Thank you.

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

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

I just want to remind everybody that our talk about the new principle that is not public information. So we want to make sure to keep that quiet until Nisha is able to send out that email and announce that. Tomorrow. Okay.

Are we ready to go back live? Yeah. Okay. All right, we're back.

So now Stacey is going to read the approval of contractor and budget revision. Yes, item 6.01, approval of contract and budget revision. I move that the Board of Education approve the lowest and best bid, including alternates 1 through 5, to be the general contractor for the Safety and Security Improvement Project from ISC Contracting Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any questions or comments? I believe they have a presentation, a quick update. Oh, I'm going to give a quick update on this before you guys make the decision. Before the questions.

So as you're aware, we're in Phase 2 of the safety and security improvements that were recommended in the safety study that was presented to the board. And so tonight we're asking for that approval for those contractors that back on December 15th we requested to solicit those bids. So, Phase 1, I just kind of want to recap, was a smaller scope, primarily included just the vestibules and the restrooms on four of the district buildings. You can see there's a significant difference in the cost on Phase 2.

So, that does include vestibules and restroom revisions to Merrimack, vestibules at Family Center and Administrative Center. However, there's significant improvements to the security cameras, DVRs, door locks and controls in all of the district buildings. So, because of the extensive wiring that is needed for the technology aspect of phase two, the cost is much more significant than phase one. So we were also given approval to engage an architect to redesign the CH library back in June of 2020 We are working with focus groups and you know Arianna Hattana talked about the furniture samples that we have in there for finalizing the design of this space.

Based on preliminary estimates on the preliminary designs, it appears a $1.5 million budget will be needed to complete this project. So we also began working with an architect in the fall of 2019 to make renovations to the administrative center. Due to the pandemic, this was put on hold. However, when we started on phase two of the safety security improvements, because we had improvements to the vestibules of this building, we asked the architects to go ahead and look at this building again and redesign the space to make improvements that we had considered back in 2019.

So as a result, we included them in the bid package for phase two, and they are presented as the alternates. There's also two other alternates in the other buildings, but we feel like all of the alternates are important, and so I wasn't planning on going into the detail, but if you have any questions on them, we can talk about the alternates more. So in August of 2019 and May of 2020, I presented to the board a listing of potential capital projects that included renovations to the administrative center, the library, and which are requested for approval tonight. At that time, we discussed with the board that depending on the cost of the safety and security projects, other capital projects would most likely be required to be funded from fund balance because we had already earmarked the funds from the sale of the Merrimack building towards improvement to ADZIC field and safety and security.

So as you can see from this slide, there was $4.3 million in proceeds from the sale of Maryland, and that includes accrued interest over the past few years, and we have allocated those funds as shown. So the balance of the funds on here for the security of Phase II is what's the balance of the Maryland funds, and so we will have to fund the remaining costs from fund balance as we show on this slide. So the $1.3 million would come out of fund balance, and the estimated $1.5 million would come out of fund balance for the library renovation, Which is a total from fund balance of $2.8 million, which is estimated. So this last slide shows the impact to the fund balance.

I did present a similar slide in my January budget planning memo. However, in that memo, we didn't have the full cost of the safety and security bid since those had not been received. So this reflects the estimated 2.8 million versus the 2.5 million that I presented in January due to timing of the finalized bids. So what we're asking you tonight is approve the construction bid, all alternates, and the budget revision.

And then I just wanted to let you know we would be bringing another $1.5 million forward in the spring for the CH library. So I just didn't want to make this decision in a vacuum that you understand it's two projects that will be coming forward. So if you look at that orange line up at the top, that shows a one-time bump in expenses of the $2.8 million. The green line at the bottom shows how the fund balance would drop, which is a 42% fund balance out in 2027, which is still a significant fund balance.

So are there any questions on that? Have we ever in the past transferred funds for operating fund balance into a capital fund balance? We're not actually transferring any funds on this. We've been building the capital balance up in order to pay for these projects because we kind of knew where they were coming.

So we're... The money is coming out of a capital fund balance. Okay, I'm sorry. Through the levy that we passed.

What were you thinking, Steve? I misunderstood. I thought you were transferring it out of the operating fund balance. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.

So if there's no questions, that's great. We just wanted to make sure that everyone understood where the funds were coming from. And nothing was budgeted because we had said we would do a budget revision when we got the final bids in, and then this is how it impacts the fund balance. Anyone else?

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Okay. Budget revision carryover funds Stacy Item 6 budget revision carryover of funds I move that the Board of Education approves a revision to the 2021 expenditure budget to reflect total expenditures adjustments of as presented Second It been moved and seconded Are there any questions or comments All in favor Aye Any opposed Motion passes 6.03. 6.03, budget revisions. I move that the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 budget revisions as presented.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Questions or comments? All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Okay, Stacey, 7.02. 7.01. Second reading and approval policy KKB audio and visual recording. I move that the School DISTRICT OF CLAITON, BORD OF EDUCATION APPROVE THE CHANGES TO POLICY KKB AS SUBMITTED.

SECOND. IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED. ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? ALL IN FAVOR?

AYE. AYE. ANY OPPOSED? MOTION PASSES.

7.03. 7.02. I'M LOOKING AT IT ON MY SCREEN AND THE PAPER AND SORRY. Second reading and approval policy DCB, political campaigns.

I move that the School District of Clayton Board of Education approve the changes to policy DCB as submitted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Are there questions or comments?

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

Consent agenda. Consent agenda 8.02 through 8.05. I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda for agenda items 8.02 through 8.05. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. And I would like to thank the Boreks for their generous donation to the soccer shed. So thank you very much. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes.

9.01, financials, December 2021. I move that the Board of Education approve payment of current expenditures and investments for December 2021 as detailed below. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any questions or comments? All in favor? Aye. Motion passes.

And Chris? Okay. And we do not have any public comments tonight. So let's see.

Any board updates, calendar, committee reports? Go ahead, Joe. Yeah, just a reminder, you all should have received an invitation around Saturday, February 26th from 9 to 10.30, virtual gathering of kind of the board PLC. Yes, thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, should we call it a night? Go ahead, Stacey.

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

Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, everyone. Sorry I screwed up those policies.

The numbers on my computer. Yeah, it was. Yeah. These are for Sandy.

Unless you keep them. What? Unless you keep them. No, I don't.

You should. Yeah. All right. Please leave that.

No, they were just sitting like this when I got here. Oh yeah, I got that. Thank you. Thank you.