January 19, 2022 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

All right, we are live. Great. Good evening. It is January the 19th and adequate notice has been given so we're going to go ahead and get started with the board meeting for tonight.

Let's start by saying the Pledge of Allegiance please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States, To the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, divisible, liberty and justice for all. Terrific. Can everybody hear me okay?

You guys hear me? Yeah. Okay, good. So I just, I want to start by giving everybody a quick update on the board candidate filing.

So the filing for the April 2022 Board of Education election closed on Tuesday, December 28th at 5pm. And we have Christine Nguyen and our incumbent, Stacy C. Wack, were the only candidates to file for the two open regular term positions. And then Jason Groh was the only candidate to file for the unexpired one-year term.

And pursuant to the Missouri statutes, they do not require a school district to hold a Board of Education election if the number of candidates who file is equal to the number of positions that are open. So no election will be held and all three candidates will be sworn into office on April the 22nd. So, Stacey, welcome back, and we are very excited to have Chris and Jason join us in April, and we will be very sad to see Steve go. So, with that, I think we're going to go on.

And Joe. And Joe. Oh, Joe. Where is Joe?

I can't even see him. You can't accept that he's leaving. That's the problem. It's crazy.

Joe, I'm sorry. You're such a fixture. I just thought we were going to become eight instead of seven, I guess. Nice.

Very nice. Okay. So we are going to now move on to recognizing our own. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr.

Patel. Thank you, Amy. So today we have a special treat for us for recognizing our own. We have a first grader from Merrimack Elementary, Jason Lang, who is going to be recognized tonight for some of his heroic actions that he displayed December 9th.

And in addition, we have a couple of extra guests today. We have our chief and captain from the Clayton Fire Department joining us as well. So I am going to hand it over to Patrick Fisher, our principal at Merrimack Elementary, to kind of give us the background and we can celebrate Jacob. Hi, Jacob.

Hi. All right. Dr. Fisher, go for it.

Hey, Jacob. It's good to see you, buddy. I'm still here. I'm just joining the night to recognize Jacob.

So, back at Merrimack on December 6th, Jacob was a first grader at Merrimack back on that day in December 6th. He was heading into the restroom as he was at the restroom. He noticed that there was some smoke and started to smell smoke in the restroom. He went into the, hear me?

Okay. Hey Patrick, yeah, we're getting, yeah. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. On December 6th, he went into the restroom and he was smelling smoke when he went into the bathroom.

And remembering all of those important things that he's heard over the last couple of years at Merrimack through all of our fire drills and everything else, he ran out of the bathroom and instead of even going all the way back to his classroom, he went and found the first adult he could find to make sure they were aware of what had been going on. That adult was then able to contact the appropriate people get the smoke alarm pulled and everybody was able to kind of get there and keep things safe And that was when they found out that we had an electrical fire in the heater in the bathroom and got everything ready to go all because of Jacob quick actions So I just wanted to say thank you to Jacob and recognize him for our school and really helping to keep our entire school community safe and making his principal extremely proud. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Fire prevention education to our schools.

And so, you know, we appreciate the relationship and the partnership we have with the school district to get in and talk to our kids and teach our kids to be able to act really quick in a situation which, you know, small, you know, big fires start small. And so, Jacob, thanks for your actions. We're really proud of you and come by and we'll show you the fire station someday. Thank you.

Oh, that's cool. Thanks. Thank you. I hope everybody's staying safe over COVID.

And I want to thank all of you for coming to the Zoom when people are honoring me. Well, Jacob, we are so happy to be here and to get to see you tonight over Zoom. We wish we could be there in person, and we are just so proud of what you did, and you are a very special example to all of the kids in Clayton, so thank you very much. Thanks.

You're welcome. I will echo that. Thank you again so much for everything you did. You're a true role model for all of our students.

And hey, will you do me a favor? Next time I'm there, can I take a picture with you? Can I have the honor of taking a picture with you? All right.

Awesome. I'll see you then. Thank you so much. And thank you, everyone, for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Terrific.

So, Dr. Patel, I think we are going to, we are on superintendent communication. So, you're on. Perfect.

Thank you. I will pull that up, or Chris will pull that up, rather. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I'm going to talk a little bit about the data that I continue to share with you and where we are in terms of COVID.

We did have a booster clinic at Clayton High School on Friday, and we had over 300 students and adults register for the booster clinic. So it was for anyone ages 12 and above. So we were very pleased with the number of people that participated in that. And then later on, I want to discuss a little bit, give you a short update on goal three, and then how our professional learning day, which was on Friday as well, went.

So to start off with some of the data that we've been sharing with you, this is our current dashboard. As you can see, we have 29 staff members that are active positive cases. We have about 99 students that are positive, with 12 of the students being excluded due to exposure and one staff member excluded due to exposure. Our positivity rate is 4.15%.

On December 15th, when I shared this with you, the positivity rate, just to give you an idea, was 0.67%. So this number is six to seven times about higher than what it was on December 15th. Spermingham Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Some of the other slides I wanted to share with you The first one I thought for comparison what we going to do is I going to show you the December 15th slide and then compare it to the one right now So this is the one that we shared on December 15th As you can see the positive test rate at that point was 8 percent And we anticipated a peak right after we've been saying that after the holidays, we knew it was coming. So right now, if you look at the positivity rate, it's at 34.2% in the county.

So quite a huge jump, obviously, and we expected that with the new variant. And then when you look at the other slide, again, from December 15th, school-aged cases per 100,000. You can see on the far right, the data is from November 30th, because it's always lagging a little. That was the update we had on December 12th.

And the most recent ones, you'll be able to see the spike. And the most drastic number that you would see is in the school age range from 15 to 19. Again, we anticipated this, but not this big of a spike, but we continue to make sure that we're staying true to our protocols, cleaning, disinfecting, handwashing, masks. We did order masks for our staff as well.

So we make sure that we're trying to give them the KN95 masks as well. And I know that's been well received and appreciated as well. So as we go through this, obviously the impact is on our staffing. And if you look at this right now, our students and staff absences are trending high.

They're about two to three times above what we would typically expect. Of the staff absences right now, roughly 35 to 55% are being filled. So we have a large amount of classrooms right now that are not being filled. But our teachers, I have to give them a huge shout out.

They're covering each other's classes. Our administrators are in the classes. Central office team, I know, is at buildings all the time. I know some of them are doing recess duty, lunch duty, whatever it takes to make sure that we can cover our buildings and our classrooms and keep them open.

So we're continuing to be creative in that area. What we have noticed when we look deeper into the positive cases, it's that it's mostly out of school exposure. We have minimum in school exposure positive cases right now. And what we're also finding is that usually when one student ends up being positive, then eventually you'll have the sibling as well.

So it's a lot of family exposure that's occurring right now. But again, as we said, we're going to continue to stay strong with everything we're doing and hoping that we can get through the next week. And based on all the healthcare professionals we're hearing from, they're expecting the, as quick as the spike was, they're expecting it to drop off just as quickly, which could be in a matter of a couple of weeks is what the latest we're hearing from them. And that's from our pandemic health task force.

So that's an update on COVID. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about, obviously, is our strategic plan. We're continuing to stay true to what we do. It's great teaching and learning.

I'm making sure everything that we do is tied back to a strategic plan. If you recall, I just have a slide that kind of gives you the dates of when we've given these updates to the community. So basically our three goals during first semester, we gave an update in September for goal one, and then on November for goal two, and then in October and November for goal three. The goal three, October, November were our community engagement forums and the student engagement forum, which I'll discuss in a little bit.

And then looking forward into the semester, we're going to continue to give updates as well. So March 30th and April 20th is when we'll continue to give an update on goal one. And then we'll also give an assessment report coming up at our next board meeting on how we were growing as learners. And we'll have our principals at that meeting as well to talk a little bit about everything that we're doing in terms of learning and growing and empowered learning specifically.

So if you recall, last semester, we did our engagement forums. We did a community engagement forum, and we did a student engagement forum, and we held them at Clayton High School. And really what we did was we did tabletop conversations around three categories. We had questions around mental health, we had questions around academic learning, and we had questions and prompts around how do you make healthy choices.

Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Thank you That was their stress reliever. That was a place that they enjoyed. They'd come to school all day and it's something that they looked forward to. So that was very clear.

It came up several times in the conversations and in the exit tickets from both groups. Another topic that came up, especially from the parent group, was a need for a social emotional learning, some sort of a curriculum, especially at the secondary level. You know, we had comments about they felt that at the elementary level, they felt like there was quite a few frequent check-ins with that, but they wanted it a little more structured at the middle and the high school. And could that be done with the actual curriculum?

Thank you. Homework that was assigned and really the purpose of it. And that was adding to this from the students perspective, it was weighing on them and it was adding to their stress level. So that's something we want to analyze further.

And then a fifth common thing that kind of rose to the top, I think, would be students concerns about are they good enough? Do they feel like are they achieving at the level that they should be? They're feeling pressure from the parents. They're feeling pressure from their peers.

And what does it really mean to be enough? And that was I put that in quotes because that came up quite a bit in some of the exit tickets from our students as well. So those are just some key takeaways from the engagement forums. Obviously, we're going to dive deeper into this.

And at our next update from goal three, we're going to share much more information on this. But I just wanted to let you know that this was, we're working on it. We're going to continue to give you more updates on it. I thought those engagement forums were very valuable to all of us.

And so we'll continue to discuss this further. Another topic that I do want to touch base on and just give everybody a quick update is professional learning in our district. We had our professional learning day on Friday. And during that professional learning, we had in the morning, we had a piece where it was assured learning.

So everybody heard about the same topic. And they were divvied up into the elementary and secondary groups. And we gave them a lot of information. And it was a lot of dialogue around goal one and goal three.

What does it mean, you know, when we say Clayton is a place for everyone? What does it mean when we say to grow as learners, but really in head and heart? So we did the assured learning in the morning, and then in the afternoon, we had breakout sessions. We had, believe this or not, we had 52 presenters in the afternoon, and those are our own staff members.

We had about 32 different topics that our teachers could pick from. So the next slide talks a little bit or shows you some of the topics that we discussed. A lot of these topics we put into some themes, rather, and some of the themes were trying to really look at what do we mean by fostering a sense of belonging? What do we mean by creating an inclusive environment?

What does it mean by when we say looking at data and making decisions in the classroom? So these were I just took a few of the topics and typed them on here just so you can see the plethora of information that we shared that day. And we had really good feedback from our professional learning day. We always look at data and try and see what what's working, what's not.

Obviously, only one hundred and twenty five people filled out the kick up survey that we always give after a professional learning. So we're hoping that number increases over the next few days. But of the people that responded so far, 94% of them felt really good about how they had an opportunity to reflect on the ways they're incorporating their learning. And then 94% of them really felt that was relevant to what they do.

And remember, this is professional learning for everyone. The district, including all of our classified staff as well. So we feel very good about that day. And so we're continuing to focus on what we do best and teaching, learning and making sure our kids are safe and happy and healthy.

And I believe, I'm not sure if I have anything else. I think I'm going to hand it off to Itana for the student report. Thank you. So I'm just going to start off by talking about some of the awards that the Globe and the Yearbook have received.

So, yeah, so both the Globe and the Yearbook became CSPA finalists in the past two weeks, I believe. And then the Yearbook also was declared a pacemaker finalist for the 2020-2021 edition of the Yearbook. So then moving on with COVID and everything, a lot of club meetings have moved to virtual settings. Well, depending on the club, though, because the clubs that are still considered more like interactive where it's kind of more needed and necessary for people to be in person.

Those are still being at school, which is, you know, different from last year where the majority of club meetings were had to be held at a virtual setting. So it's great that, you know, the club is still going to be online, can be online. And I think there's a picture of it on the next slide, too. But, yeah.

So for example, our teams team has started meeting in person with the option to be online too. So it's been pretty flexible, as well as our robotics team I think has been doing the same thing. And along with that we still had a high attendance at sport events, which is something that we kind of started to take off last semester and it's continuing into this semester with like swim meets, basketball games, wrestling meets, and all the other winter sports. And then lastly, just another thing that's been going on around school is that the freshmen took the PSAT 9 this past Wednesday, which I believe is new at the high school.

And then lastly, just some updates with the District Advisory Council. So we've decided that we're going to start the whole application process for the District Advisory Council earlier in the year. So instead of starting it next year, we're going to do it at the end of this year so that we can have all the members chosen going into next year. We're also going to be sending those applications to eighth graders who are going to be incoming freshmen, especially those eighth graders who are in the Y-Down District Advisory Council, just so that we can really get things going faster.

And then the District Advisory Council and I also talked about the public engagement forums this morning and some of our main takeaways were just how grades and, you know, the pressure of grades are this year. I think we mainly thought that the grading system was so just a little bit confusing. I don't think there's too much, you know, pushback for it among students anymore. I think it's mostly just understanding like why the grading system had to change.

And like Dr. Patel said, like questioning what the purpose of some homework assignments were. So I don't know, I think we would like to come together to, you know, really define how homework should be graded and how it should impact your grade, which has also led us to think about how we think in classes that we thrive better, the ones where we're focusing more on our learning and not on just what our grade is going to be. So we're doing the assignments to actually understand and not just to get a good grade in the class.

And then we also talked a little bit about support systems and the access to support systems in schools and how we can increase that support. So, yeah, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you so much, I, Tana and Dr.

Patel, thank you for your update. I also wanted to just take a minute. And with respect to your update around COVID, I really do want to, on behalf of the board, thank all of the teachers and staff and central office for everybody's continued patience and flexibility. It's been a really hard time and unprecedented time.

So we definitely appreciate everybody and everybody's hard work. We're going to get through it together. So thank you. So let's move on to our calendar update.

One second. All right. Is everybody seeing our presentation here? Yep.

Great Tony are you here I here All right I think Tony and I are going to kind of go through a quick calendar update for the board And I think we going to let Tony is going to kind of kick off the first part of our presentation The calendar committee met again on January 6th to review two draft revised calendars that Chris and I had worked on for 22, 23 school year. And at the last meeting, the calendar committee worked in small groups to review each draft. And then each of the small groups came back and shared feedback on the drafts. Overall, the committee felt that one of the drafts better met the needs based on the input that we gathered from the Clayton community.

We did end the meeting with the committee wondering what might be the solution to possibly ending the school year for students prior to Memorial Day. The draft that we had put together did not meet that ask. So the calendar committee is going to meet again in the next few weeks to discuss the draft and any possible changes that we would like to present to the board. You know, it gets a little tricky when we look at the calendar days required versus, I'm sorry, the number of hours required with the parameters that are given by the state for what we can do, which I think we went over at the previous update.

So I think when we talk about, Chris has a slide up right now, calendar time versus contact time. So what we mean by that is if we wanted to be out before Memorial Day, then we need to look at what we're calling, you know, the calendar time versus contact time. So with calendar time, this is in reference to the state no longer counting the school year by days, but by the number of hours that students attend school. So what we could do is we could add minutes to the school day and that could provide us with those required amount of hours for calendar time.

When we refer to contact time, think of it as days that the students walk through the doors and get the day of school. When you think of them going to school. If we modify the calendar to end prior to Memorial Day, then what we could do is we could add those minutes. We need to add those minutes to meet their criteria for calendar time.

But we, in essence, would be losing three days of contact time with students. And then there's also, go ahead, Chris. Yeah, as I said, I think that's just kind of one of the important things that we wanted to illustrate is that there's lots of different ways to make our calendar work in terms of meeting the required, you know, matching the days in our teacher contract and, you know, meeting the required number of hours that we have to have for student instruction. You know, the question that we have to answer when we start making some of those trade-offs is, you know, so if you trim your calendar by three days, that's 1,100 and some change minutes.

You know, you can make that up across the entire school year by adding seven minutes to a day, for example, at the high school. But the question is, but you've lost three days of three class periods of instruction, three days of instruction. So how does that balance out? So is the benefit of ending the school year three days earlier, does that outweigh losing that contact time or those days that students will actually walk through the door?

So those are just kind of some of the big questions that we don't necessarily have the answer to. We try to find some good ones for as we're going through this whole calendar process. I know Tony, having been a, you know, having been a, not only a teacher, but a building administrator, you know, has some unique perspective on that as well. So when we think about that, you just got to think about the learning that may not be happening with those three days that we're missing.

So if we add on this, you know, seven minutes or whatever it takes to get the requirement, that's much different. Yes, we're meeting the requirement, the threshold the state has set, but we're not maybe necessarily meeting what we have laid out, what the expectations are for the teachers to teach and the students to learn over the traditional amount of day at school attendance days that students have. So that's just one of the things that we have to look at and determine what we're willing to do and some feedback from the board on that. Yeah.

And as Tony mentioned earlier, we brought two drafts to the calendar committee. There was one draft that the group definitely gravitated towards. And we wanted to kind of just kind of show you that as kind of our work in progress. Right now, we've got one more visit, one more meeting with the calendar committee before we think we've got this process wrapped up.

But the draft that we came back to that everyone seemed to really rally around is different in a number of different ways. And a lot of these different changes that we made respond to the feedback that we got from that thought exchange and some good conversation that we had, not only with the calendar committee, but with our central office team and all of our building administrators. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried So this draft what we calling draft 1A reduces the number of teacher prep days to five from six It reduces the number of early release days we have in the school year to two from seven So the only early release days that remain in the calendar are the two days associated with fall and spring parent-teacher conferences. We brought back the, or we brought back, we moved, we moved from, positionally moved where the teacher conference comp day was to actually follow fall conferences in October.

We got some feedback from our staff that they really needed that day and needed that break for that. We added an additional day of professional learning that following Monday. So that actually also builds in kind of a fall break for our students and our families. But adding that additional day of professional learning then also offsets the early release days that we pulled out of the calendar in terms of total professional learning time.

So we don't really see a net loss in professional learning hours from our staff, just allocating it a little differently within this calendar. Because we've made some changes and put a few things back in this calendar for it to end where we have it ending right now, which is that first Friday in June, we ended up needing to include two paid holidays for our teachers in this calendar, which is something new that we're doing before. So it does have two fewer student attendance days than our current calendar. But because of the hours and the time we gained back by removing the early release days from the calendar, our hours actually met out to be almost about the same.

I mean, the calendar hours are within an hour of each other compared to our current calendar or the current draft that's approved. And we tried to, as best we could, eliminate the or reduce the difference in days between first semester and second semester with a fixed, with essentially what's a fixed start date to school being no more than 10 days before Labor Day in September. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

We have one closing slide about next steps. Does anyone have any questions before we wrap up? Yes, Itana. I can't see people, just so you know, when they're raising their hands.

I can stop my share if that would be easier for you, Amy. That would be easier. Thank you. Sure.

Perfect. Okay, go ahead, Itana. Um, okay, thank you. I just had a couple questions.

So first, so it says in the board docs that second semester is 15 days longer. Yeah, like, so how does that work? Well, so it's like for this school year, for example, second semester is 13 days longer. So, I mean, we've always worked with an imbalance between first semester and second semester.

That's just, as I said earlier, that's kind of the nature of trying to develop a calendar where finals and first semester ends before winter break. So, I mean, that's always a conversation we have with Dr. Pichuski and the high school administration. And we try to make that number as small as possible.

I think the smallest it's ever been in my time doing the calendar has been about eight or nine days. So there still always that gap and that is something that really only impacts semester classes at the high school So it not a broad number of classes but I mean that something that we aware of and that we always just worked through Okay so it 15 days longer than the first semester Correct Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. It's more of just an awareness issue and a curriculum issue in terms of working with our principals, probably mostly our secondary principals and having them work with their teachers to make sure that we're building the right awareness around those holidays and the impact that those holidays have on students outside of school. Yeah, thank you.

Stacey, go ahead. Thanks. So I had a couple questions. One was about what Itana brought up about the 15 extra days second semester.

And I know I asked about this last time, but you had a meeting since then. Did you discuss about ending the semester in January to try to even that out? I know you said, Chris, we've kind of always done that, but, you know, eight or nine days different is way different than 15 days different. And so I'm also wondering, were any of the teachers that are on the committee teachers that teach semester courses and how do they feel about it?

And have you asked, you know, other districts that switched to that last, you know, the last couple of years, how it went? So I off the top of my head, I don't know if we have any teachers that teach semester courses on the on the calendar committee. I don't think we do, just kind of thinking through. I think your input would be very valuable.

15 weeks is a lot. It's a big difference. That's three full weeks. I mean, it is three full weeks.

I mean, it's two days more than we have this year. So, I mean, it's not a big jump. I mean, there is a fair amount of standardized testing that typically occurs in the spring. So that is one way that we've always kind of not wrote off the difference, but said that there's days that are built in to accommodate that because there's things that you're not having class for that have to typically happen in the spring.

I did float the idea of looking at, you know, ending, looking at ending the semester, you know, kind of two weeks in January with high school administration. We didn't really have a deep conversation about it, but I just, it was kind of more one of those, hey, have we thought about looking back at this? Yeah, I think it's worth a look, especially because the state of post-start date back. And, you know, again, I think just because it's always been that way isn't reason to keep doing it.

I think I'd be curious what teachers that teach those courses think about the semesters being so imbalanced. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Exam once winter break is over.

But yeah, we can definitely explore that, Stacey, and we can look into other districts that have changed, that moved their semester. Yeah, I'm just like, I actually just talked to some students I know, like in Rockwood who did it this year, and they actually appreciated having the whole winter break to kind of take a mental Break and decompress before coming back to take final exams. And there wasn't as much stress building. So I think there are benefits to our kids' mental health in doing it that way as well.

So I just want to make sure that you're looking into it and getting teacher and administrator and student perspective on the possibility. I mean, change is hard, but I do think 15 days difference, three whole weeks difference in a semester is a lot. So thank you for that. And I just had another quick question.

So this said, this proposed calendar has two fewer attendance days. What are the consequences of that? Is that just if we need more snow days, we'd have to make them up? Or is there something else?

I mean, so I think, you know, we it's two fewer attendance days as compared to this year. And we have always typically exceeded what the state minimum is. And it's it's it's kind of hard. It's we're saying days, but really we're counting we're counting hours.

So this calendar, what you look at is, you know, the magic number is 1,080, which is the number of hours that you need to build a calendar for. 1,044 is the state minimum. And then you have to include 36 hours of inclement weather time. So really 1,080 is your minimum.

We are north of 1,080 in this new calendar at all three of our schools. Some schools only by about three hours. In our elementary schools, by about 25 or 30 hours, just because of the differing lengths of the school day. So we meet all the requirements and then some even though there's two fewer days that students actually walk through the door.

Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. And thank you, Tony, too, for looking into like what your earlier point about is adding a couple minutes per class period as valuable as three whole days.

As a former high school teacher, I appreciate you looking at what's best for the students and they're learning there too. So thanks. Thank you to both of you. Thanks.

Let's see. Any other questions? Joe? So not a question, just more of a comment, which is just to echo what Stacey said.

I think it's great to look at potentially ending the semester, kind of aligning it. I mean, because other districts, U City included, are just like Rockwood. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Tony, thank you for the report tonight. And we will move on to, let's see here. Everything on my computer keeps shutting down. So we are going to move on to the policy readings.

I guess that's me again. Sorry, I couldn't get the agenda up quickly enough. I hadn't closed my presentation. So there's two policies that I'm bringing forth to the board that have a few minor revisions to them.

And that's really what both of them are is just KKK is audio and visual recording. When you actually look through the marked up version of this policy, I mean, there is actually quite a bit of red in there, which indicates change. But a lot of it is just been reorganized or, you know, reworded slightly. The big thing that we see in KKB is that there was a recent statute recent House bill that was passed that requires school districts to allow parents to record meetings IEP meetings and 504 meetings So this policy was revised to be compliant with that.

It was revised to also add some additional authority for a superintendent to prohibit recordings in all the places that this policy allows them to happen if they're deemed that they're being misused or it's disrupting the process or that recording would actually be recording material that has been copyrighted by someone else. There's some additional language that prohibits the flying of drones without our permission over our property and buildings, which is very much a safety thing. Beyond that, again, most of the changes are here just reflect what happened on state law. So, Chris, I have a quick question on this.

So the red line that I'm looking at, are those, who's changed? I mean, I know that they're additions, but who made that? Did we make those changes or did MSBA make those changes? That is MSBA's version.

We did not make any of our own changes to this policy. Okay. So I think that we might need to go back and actually take a look at the statute. It's section 162.686.

And I actually, so I'm a legal nerd, I actually pulled up the statute. And I think they might have had it wrong where they said they must notify the district at least 24 hours prior to the time the meeting is scheduled to occur. That's inconsistent with what the statute says. Okay.

So if you go back, I'll email it to you, but that's the statute. That's not what the statute says. They say that we cannot require it to be. The statute says school districts and charter schools shall not require parents to notify the school district or charter school of such parents' intent to record a meeting more than 24 hours in advance.

Okay. We can get that language cleaned up. That was my only comment. Does anybody else have comments?

Yeah, I actually had a comment about the same part about, you know, parent recording IEPs and 504s. But depending on whatever you find out with the statute what Amy just brought up, I just want to make sure I didn't see anywhere in the policy that the parents are notified about whatever that is like it, if they, if they do require, if they are required to give 24 hours notice if they're going to be recording it, shouldn't we be required as a district to tell parents that when they get a notification of the meeting that If you are going to want to record it, we need to know within 24 hours in advance. I just want to make sure parents are aware if they want to record it, that they would have to give us notice. Unless what Amy's saying, you know, unless we change it, the wording.

I just want to be sure parents know that's an option and what are the requirements to do so. Absolutely. I think that we sent out a notice for all of those, and we could certainly add that language into the notice that gets sent out. Right.

We get notifications ahead of time of an IEP or 504 meeting, but I just want to make sure now that it can be recorded, parents know exactly what the policy is about that. Yeah, and one of the things I can do is touch base with Robin. Yeah. And she's a little more well versed on the types of notifications that go out related IEPs and all that.

So I can make sure that we're including that. I mean, I assume this is also a legislative change or legal law change that Special School District is very, very aware of and working through as well. Jason, do you have something? No?

Okay. Sorry. I thought I saw your hand. All righty.

So, Chris, are you going to, I think there's a few more policies. Do you want to just move on to those? Yeah, sure. I have one more.

I think Tony might have the last one. Yeah so then DCB is political campaigns Again just some language within this that aligns this policy with recent changes in state law The changes in law actually don't really affect the intent of the policy or what it's supposed to cover. They just included some additional language, really wanting to make sure that school districts or political subdivisions know the types of things that they're not allowed to expend public funds on. So really just aligning this policy with current changes in state law won't change any practice or approach that we have had in the past or would continue to take with any sort of bond or levy election.

Steve. Steve, you got the moderator. Thank you. It seems like this first sentence is kind of poorly constructed because it says, no contribution or expenditure of district funds shall be made directly by any board member, employer, agent of the district.

I know it's talking about district funds, but why does it say direct? It sort of implies that board members are not supposed to be making contributions. That would be the, I mean, the only way that we would be directly making a contribution is if we were contributing our own money. Which I would assume we can, and traditionally we have made, board members have made contributions, for example, to ballot initiatives.

And so I'm just a little, I understand the intent is to avoid using district money. Correct. We can ask for some clarification on that. My interpretation of that would be is that since it's the board that's approving expenditure of district funds and this statute is essentially about prohibiting the expenditure of district funds to support or oppose a ballot issue or candidate for public office, that that piece of language might be covering.

I'm just curious what the purpose of the. It just seems strange the way they worded it. Sure. And I mean, being that that is not red line, so that is actually worded how the policy has been for the last time that this was adopted, what 2015 looks like.

I mean, we could easily just add language at the beginning to say no contribution of district funds or expenditure of district funds. You know, that's a pretty easy fix. And I think that clarifies it. Yep, we can do that.

Okay. Any other comments, questions? Yeah, just to make sure. So that wasn't, that was, they weren't alluding to campaign funds, right?

For some reason, I was slightly confused when I read that also, but it wasn't about campaign funds. Our personal campaign funds cannot be used. No, I mean, this strictly relates to district funds. So funds by the school district.

Okay, let me make sure I got it right. Okay, cool. Thanks. Yep.

Anyone else? Terrific. Okay. And I think we will, we can move on to the resignation of professional staff members.

Okay, that would be me. So we're going to be discussing policy GCPB, which is resignation Resignation of professional staff members. And the purpose of this agenda item is to share information with the board and get some input regarding the revisions made to policy that MSBA has created that we believe will clarify the monetary judgment that the district will seek when employees request a break of their employment contract. So essentially what we're looking at is specifying the monetary judgment and what those amounts would be.

And as you can see here on the memo, we would do that based on the date the resignation was received So if it was between June 1st and June 30th it would be Between July 1st and July 31st August 1st or later it would be Basically, the revisions that are noted on that policy also include, you know, what the board would consider maybe a possible exception where they would not have to pay those charges. Superroportionate, Proprietary, and Proprietary. Once we've received the resignation. And then if the amount is not paid within the one month time frame, then the district has certain rights they can do to file charges, have the employees license or certificate revoked, seek monetary judgment, and inform the potential, the employees potential employer that they did not fulfill their contractual duties.

Any questions? Stacey? Sorry, I have all these questions tonight. So I have a couple of questions about that aren't new parts of this policy, but there's a phrase in here that says an employee will not be released from a contract unless a suitable replacement is found.

How do we define a suitable replacement? Is that just a substitute teacher or an actual new hire in that position? Yeah, I think it would kind of depend on the situation. Typically, it's an actual new hire or someone that we've moved in that position that we believe will fulfill it for the remainder of the contract.

Okay, thank you. And then there's another part. This is highlighted part of what's new. When it says, if the employee does not pay the liquidated damages as required that sentence.

So at the end, it says the legal remedies when an employee breaks a contract with the district, including but not limited to filing charges to have a teaching certificate or professional license revoked or seeking a monetary judgment. I'm just wondering if we should say and or like would there might be a case where we want to revoke a license and penalize someone financially. So I feel like if we just made that little change and or it would give us the option to do that. Yeah, I think that's a great recommendation.

We can certainly I will make a note of that for the second reading. Thank you. And then my last question is on the last part about the allegations of sexual misconduct. Why is that that we would only notify a public or charter school and not a private school if we were asked?

It's related to the PSRS. So that is a system that we reported. Okay. But if you got a call from a private school in St.

Louis wanting to hire, you know, someone that we knew had this allegation, I assume you would tell them they're just not in the system or? Yeah, exactly. So PSRS is mandated because it's part of the retirement system. But we would do that because of that's what we would do as a public school.

But we're not required to with a private or charter school. Okay, got it. Thank you. So, I wonder if that should be more broadly written that you'd like, and the school board may elect to, you know, make that a part of the process.

Are you saying, Amy, other than the reason why we're not able to assess compensatory damages or something like that so that we're not in a situation where if there's a real, you know, a legitimate reason why a staff member needs to be released that we're forcing them to pay that? Are you saying, Amy, other than the reason why we're not able to assess compensatory damages? Things that were listed in there, like relocation of a spouse, military service, serious illness, an additional reason that may not fall in those categories that the board would- Well, or you might, yeah, I mean, you might want to add or other reasons that may arise from time to time or something, you know, make it a little bit broader. Let me ask you a question.

Is that what we want to do? I mean, when I read these, when I read, like, the compensatory damages, the fees, essentially, it sounds harsh, man. If they quit and then we got to go back and get some money from them, like $5,500 from them or something like that, that sounds harsh. Or it's going to be a penalty or it's a judgment in court.

Sounds really tough. But then we're also saying that, you know, it's subjective. Thank you. What do you all think about that?

I agree, Jason. I don't think we open, we don't want to open ourselves up to like, well, we let that teacher do it. Why aren't you letting me? And I think the list that's in the policy is pretty clear, has some pretty good valid excuses that we would not apply, you know, apply those to.

So I do think you're right. Making it subjective could be dangerous. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. You know, that there's, we're not going to be pushovers if someone wants to resign in the middle of the school year.

Right. Amy? Yeah, sorry, I was just reading it. Yep.

You know, I haven't studied this, you know, or the law around it or anything like that. I sort of hear some of those concerns in terms of the open-endedness and how harsh it is and things like that. I mean, like you, Amy, I kind of get caught up in the legal structure. I mean, to me, like, we have the right under, you know, employment law and contractual obligations to do whatever we have the right to do when someone violates their contract.

I personally don't see a lot of value in putting that in a policy unless we need it as a deterrent. If we're having a problem with this and people are like walking away from their contracts on some kind of consistent basis, I don't really recall that, but that's I think maybe something we would want to address. But it doesn't strike me as we have a huge problem here that we're trying to solve. We're just doing a policy because we do policies, you know?

So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's my perspective. I mean, I agree with Gary. I think that the fact that this is in the policy, I mean, you know, they're still not contractually obligated to pay it. I mean, we would have to put this in the actual contracts that we have with the teachers in order for it to be enforceable.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried I mean can we do that Is that the standard around the state where most teachers sign a contract knowing that if they break it they might get hit up for I mean, I think that in all different types of contracts, there's liquidated damages clauses. Tony, didn't you look at different districts to see? I did.

Yeah, so there are several districts that do include monetary, specific monetary damages for that. So Valley Park, just glancing at our area here, Valley Park does, Maplewood, Richmond Heights does, and then some other districts that I had listed. I can share that back out with the board again, if you guys would like to see that document that I had kind of created. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. This is the monetary amount that we are going to say that we need based on the timeline of teachers requesting the break of the day. Right. Just to be clear, Gary and Amy are bringing up great points.

So they don't have to really pay anything is what we're saying. In our current policy, it's very broad. So I think it's really vague and unclear. So we could pursue it, but we have nothing in the policy that actually says the amount that we're pursuing.

So it would become a little bit more subjective and involve attorneys and that sort of thing. This would at least spell it out a little bit and make it clear whether or not it's enforceable. I could run it past, I could go talk to legal and get their thoughts on this and bring that back before second reading or provide that information to you and we can update. Yeah, I'd like to know whether or not this is legal we're talking about.

We can't really enforce it anyway. If it's not enforceable, and we're discussing this out in public like this, which is a great thing, people are listening and saying, I only had to pay this. I'm up. So I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

It seems like, man. Yeah, I understand. I do know that some of the districts that have this in policy do follow the policy. And to make sure I'm clear about this, you did mention districts that also have it in the contract, right?

I'm not sure if they have in the contract. I don't know if you need to necessarily have in the contract if it's in policy, but I can check with legal when we contact them. I don't think it needs to be in the contract, maybe for the deduction of the payroll that might have to be in there or some sort of signed agreement. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I know it's in the policy. I see that, but I don't really care. I need the money. All right.

Let me stop being silly. Yeah, let me know. Let us know how this goes. Yeah, Tony, I would ask legal, I guess.

I would be curious what she says about how this would be enforced and if we could include it in a contract or do we not need to? I made a note to do that. I'll check with legal and I'll get that information for the board. Yeah, ask the real lawyer instead of me or Amy, right?

I had a question or comment One more comment So you know I think that we need to move rather than these flat figures I think a percentage makes more sense. I mean, thinking that you could have a more senior teacher who's making a lot more money or an administrator. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Because I think, as we've experienced this year, I think the board, if it's a teacher that, you know, we weren't really happy with to begin with, you know, we might waive it. And even though it's not one of these issues, whereas if it's a teacher that really creates a big hole, then we're more strict. So I think maximum discretion is always the best strategy from a management's perspective. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Damages associated our policy as part of the contract. That makes it much clearer to the teacher and administrator that this is an enforceable contract. It's not sort of a friendly agreement. This is an enforceable contract that the district takes seriously and will pursue damages on.

So, I think, obviously we need to get a legal opinion, but I think from a communication perspective with their teachers, that would be a valuable paragraph to have in the contract. Well, yeah, I mean, I agree. And I also know under Missouri law, like, liquidated damages clauses are highly negotiated contractual clauses in a contract. And you can't assess liquidated damages unless both parties agree to the damages in writing.

And they also have to be tied to something. There has to be like some metric that a liquidated damages clause is tied to. So just sticking it in a policy, you could call another lawyer. I don't know if you want, but I'm telling you that it's, unless it's in the contract that, I mean, you can have it in the policy if you want, but unless you put it in the contract, I don't think it's going to be enforceable.

That's why it's nice to have it tied to a percentage of their salary or something, which makes it variable by employee. Yeah, there's a lot of case law on that, that in order for a clause like that to be enforceable, even in a contract, it can't just be arbitrary. It has to be tied to something reasonable and some specific metric. Okay.

Well, I will be happy to touch base with legal to discuss if it's enforceable and if it needs to be actually in the contract and then some verbiage in there regarding collecting legal fees if we need to go to court. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, I think we are on to number seven now, which is our consent agenda. Stacy, will you go ahead and read the motion? Yes I move that the Board of Education approve consent agenda item 7 through 7 Second It been moved and seconded Any questions or comments Yes, Stacy. I'm sorry.

I have a question about item 7.04, the tuition rates for early childhood. So do we need to hold on a second? Do we need to then pull this out of the consent? Yeah, I think so.

Do we? If we're, if we, I think, I think we might, if you're, if we run a, I think we might need to pull it out of the consent if we want to discuss it. Is that, I don't know. Gary, do you know if that's right?

Yeah, we would at this point we would need to amend the agenda to do that. So we would need a motion to amend. I could just email my question to Mary Jo and Nisha if you want. Joe's laughing.

Okay, never mind. Well, hold on a second. Do we, I mean, can we just easily pull it off or? I mean, that's, I think that's the problem.

Stacy, if she wants to or not. Stacy, do you want, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that this would be a good question in the public. Okay, well then let's, let's...

So Stacey, I think your motion would need to be to... So I need to make a motion. I move that the Board of Education approve removing consent agenda item 7.04 out of consent items. I don't...

period. I think that's fine. Can someone second it? Second.

It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Aye. Okay. Perfect. Okay, I'm sorry, guys.

Well, hold on. So now do we need to go back and approve the consent agenda, though? Now you should approve the consent agenda. Okay, so let's just approve the consent agenda.

So I moved that the Board of Education approve consent agenda item 7.02, 7.03, Spervantage, 7.05, 7.06, 7.07, and 7.08. So I'll take that as you've said. I said them all except the one I said. Original motion and seconded.

It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. Hopefully no strict parliamentarians are watching us today. Okay.

No, that's right. Stacey, go ahead and read the motion for 7.04. Okay. I move that the Board of Education approve item 7.04, tuition rates for early childhood education for 2022 to 2023.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Okay. Questions?

Thank you. I'm sorry, guys. No. Okay.

I know I've asked this before and it's been brought up before, and I know really this item is strictly Tuition rates. However, do we first two questions. First of all, do we offer financial assistance. And secondly, have we done any more work looking into allowing our Vic siblings younger siblings to attend the family center at no cost or reduced cost you know I know we've talked for several years about Spervantage, and the next question.

I can answer the question about the tuition support. So there is a fund and there is also, so there's like a scholarship fund that they have and there's also a Reduce status so that they can fill out an application and get a free reduced status. And then we also provide a discount for second students or multiple students. But the Vic question, I apologize.

That really wasn't on my radar. So I'm not sure I'd have to talk to Debbie to see if something that she was working on. And I can follow up with that one as well with Debbie. Stacy, can you elaborate a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not directly related to tuition, but because it is a pay to attend program, it might. You know, we've just talked for years about increasing diversity at the Family Center, and I feel like it's been mentioned. Before about what about our VIX students, younger siblings, and getting them to attend the family center, which would benefit them and, you know, them and us in so many ways. You know, beginning in our curriculum sooner before they get to kindergarten, you know, becoming a part of our community sooner.

And so because our K through 12 VIX students, you know, aren't paying money to be here like a tuition student, I guess. You know, if we could figure out a way to get them to the family center, I know it's a fee-based program. So I guess if we could figure that out, how would it affect their tuition and what can we do about that? You know, the state recently started paying for, I guess it might be a mute point since the Vick program is going to start to phase out.

Right. We might have some now. Who knows? Yeah, they started making payments for early childhood.

Yeah. And since ours is a fee based program, we don't qualify for it. But I don't know if there would be an option, some way to somehow have something that might make that work. I'm not sure.

Be something worth looking into. I mean, I guess the starting point would be to see if we even have students that would qualify, like if any of our students have kids, have siblings that age. If it's just a couple, there might be an easier financial solution to it than if there were 20, you know. Absolutely.

I'll explore that further, Stacey. Thank you. That's a great point, Stacey. Thanks for bringing it up.

Any other questions? Okay. Not all the questions necessarily, but do you want to go? Go ahead.

Sorry, Jason. Because I think about this stuff often, diversity. I think about this stuff often, so it's such a complicated conversation. Stacey, I think that's a great question that you're asking.

And that is correct. We are facing, we can be phased out. And I want, you know, so then like, you know, the idea of allowing students to attend, you know, from their childhood to make it more diverse. Such an interesting conversation because it's like, because diversity is not just the optics of multiracial, it's also the culture, right?

Thank you. I think it's important to consider because I don't know, you know, I don't, I mean, I don't know the data on the family center off the top of my head, but I would be, you know, I don't know if there's a ton of racial diversity over there. Maybe there is. I, and I just don't know.

But I just, I think it's something, you know, for us to consider. You know, racial diversity in addition to what Jason just said, you know, cultural diversity. Right. So any other comments on that Okay All in favor Aye Aye Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes.

And then, Stacey, I think we're on number eight, which is the financials. I move that the Board of Education approve 8.01 financials from October 2021 and 8.02 financials from November 2021. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Any questions? Yes, Steve. Steve, I think you're on your... Yeah, it's semi-related.

Mary Jo, we got a commitment. I thought that we were going to get a revised management document from the audit by the end of January. Are we still on track for that? I am working on it.

I will say COVID put me a little behind. Sure, of course. We've been shorthanded and out of the office and stuff. But I have been doing research trying to get some different examples and some options.

Okay. Okay. Thanks. Anybody else?

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Okay. And we are on to public comment, Chris.

There is no public comment this evening. No public comment. Okay. Then we are on to board communication.

And I know that Kim had a Clayton Education Foundation meeting and unfortunately, so she'll give us an update next time. And then there are parks and rec maybe? Yeah, just real quick. We did have a parks and rec meeting last week and the interim director, the first month, was focused on the center of Clayton and including the recent renovations and all that's been completed as well as what they've been doing over the last almost two years now in terms of dealing with the wave of people.

Spervantage of the Center, the Center is a place where we are not renewing or dropping the memberships to gyms and things like that. Obviously, the Center is something that we as a district we are 50% partner in and we know all about the money that we spent for those renovations and what that all was so I won't go into that at all. I will just say I haven't been in the building and using the Center since early 2020 I guess and Actually, even before that because we hadn't had a membership for a little while. And it did prompt me to go and take a look and see some of the renovations and changes for myself.

And glad that I did that. I would just encourage everyone to do that and take a look at the facility and what our kids are getting to use and what our community is getting to use. Like every fitness center like that, it's been a really challenging couple of years. And they're doing everything they can to program towards getting people back in the building and using it.

Spervantage, Maybe you get a chance to see the building for yourselves And that it Awesome. So, I think it was last Monday or Tuesday, Jason and I went to Jeff City, where people were testifying for an opposition to a few house bills. I'll remind you guys, there's two, House Bill 1995 and House Bill 1474, and they're calling these the Parents' Bill of Rights. And if they're passed, it would ban specific curriculum and require advance notice for divisive topics when they're going to be taught and allow districts to be sued and fined for violating these.

They basically will ban teachers from the way that I read it. I'm just paraphrasing this in layman's terms from teaching anything that could be construed as controversial. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Let's hear some questions first, and then maybe we can fill them in.

Well, no one has any questions right away. I'll just say Ivy and Tata did an excellent job of presenting their argument. And I was just impressed by the parents that were there from the district and the teachers. Were there any teachers there?

I want to make sure I'm saying the right thing. Yeah, like he's, you know, like, like, he's just over there. And, no, it was just great to see people there who are interested in supporting this, this, this situation because it's, I mean, I find it absolutely moving. And we may have just faced it.

But anyway, anyone have any questions at all? Did MSBA come out against it? I didn't. Oh, can you hear me now?

Yeah. I didn't see anybody from MSBA there. I didn't hear anybody from MSBA there, but they were taking written testimony too. I know that for House Bill 1474, there were over a thousand testimonies.

57 were in support, 980 in opposition. So, and some of those were done in person and some of them were written. So, so I just, that's the only information that I have. I just want to, I actually read that it was a record number of testimonies.

It was. And I was sorry I couldn't join you and I was following along on online and on Twitter. And anyway, I just want to thank you two for going and representing yourselves personally and us as a district as a board. So I appreciate you being there and and that's a good question Steve I wonder Nisha if you know if MSBA has taken a public stance on this or not.

I have not received any information about them taking a public stance for or against it. But I do want to thank Jason and Amy for being there And I know we had a lot of our parents go as well in support of this And we right now we also I know Thank you Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. Which unfortunately are driving that.

And so it's just even more reason why we need to be there, right? Where we need to bring the voice because this is a good example of where I think MSBA and our district are likely not aligned. So again, thanks for being there and taking that voice. And another thing, Joe, they often don't until further in the process, like when something's coming up on the House floor or something, when they get more involved.

So this is actually more impactful now to be involved than when NSBA is involved. I also want to say we should definitely be thinking, having a strong representative down there like Ian Mackey. He's a beast. And, I mean, he's not afraid.

He will mix it up. And, honestly, like, we're lucky to have someone who will champion a cause or any cause for that matter, but someone like him that's willing to do it and step up to the plate and make it happen. So I really want to say if he's listening right now, I definitely appreciate him trying to control that narrative. So that's important.

And, yeah, man, we should find out if MSDA is going to step up to the plate also. And then we need to think about, I mean, honestly, to me, it's so important. We need to be thinking about how we deal with that. And they're not willing to step up to the plate what the recourse is going to be from our perspective.

How are we going to deal with them? So, you know, but anyway, I appreciate Amy and Ivy. Poppy. She's a parent and it was awesome.

Jason, Poppy. Wait, wait, hold on. What did I say? Poppy, not Ivy.

Damn it, why am I saying the wrong name? Sorry. Forgive me. Sorry.

Poppy. Poppy. I'm just saying. I know.

I knew what you meant, but I just didn't care. I just wanted to make sure. I appreciate you correcting me. I'm still good.

Absolutely. Okay, great. Well, I think then that unless anybody has anything else that we can... Oh, and we got our financials approved, right, Stacey?

Okay. And I think we can get a motion to adjourn. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Motion carried.