September 27, 2023

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

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

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

I'm going to go ahead and get started while this is loud tonight. It is September 27th, 2023, thank you everybody for being here tonight. And we have our tax rate hearing, so we're going to go ahead and start with that. So, John, we'll go ahead and, you already came up there.

Thank you. I have a few comments before we take public comment This public hearing is in preparation for setting the 2023 tax rate Notice that this hearing was posted back on September 18th in a timely manner For 23 our assessed valuation has increased to billion It up from last year at billion an increase of million $35 million of that was due to new construction. 94% of that new construction was in the commercial area. As you know, when assessed values rise, rates will fall in accordance with that.

So while residential assessed valuations together rose about 7.8%, the residential rate will decrease a little about 5.1%, which is about 21 cents. Commercial increased 6.3%. The rate will go down 3.4%. Personal property actually went down three-quarters of a percent, and its rate will actually go up a little bit, 2.4%.

Overall, we'll expect new revenue of $1.5 million from new construction and $1.17 million from reassessment. In this process, it's turned out that we've had to lower our debt service levy, which has been steady at 62 cents for a number of years now. It's going down 11 cents to 51 cents. Overall, that will save taxpayers about $1.7 million.

As you know, our debt is about $46.1 million of general obligation bonds today, which is scheduled to pay off in March of 29, a little over five, about five and a half years from now. We have enough money coming in from this valuation or this levy to keep pace with our requirements. Tax collections from our operating levy will be used to pay salaries, benefits, services, supplies, and make capital improvements in accordance with our budget that you adopted for the 23-24 year. And for residential properties, they saw assessed valuations increase 7.8%, but with the rate rollback, their taxes will increase on average about 2.3%.

Individual experience will vary from that. That's what the average is. With that, I'm ready for public comment. Is there any public comment?

No? Okay. Okay. So we are going to approve this, don't we?

We're going to approve it later. Okay. So is this where you want me to adjourn? Okay, so we're going to go ahead and adjourn the tax rate hearing and commence the regular hearing.

Thank you, John. So adequate notice has been given, and let's go ahead and say the Pledge of Allegiance now. Okay, so Gary, we're on 3.02. I move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda as posted.

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

Any opposed? Motion passes. And Dr. we are now on 4.01.

So Dr. Poole is going to come up and we're going to talk about our amazing students. All right, good evening, everyone. So I have two students that we are going to recognize today.

Our first student is Sari Gross. Sari is bringing a national philanthropic organization to St. Louis called Honeycomb, and it will be Honeycomb STL. So Sari is going to come up and kind of talk about the motivation behind that and the good work that she has begun doing.

Hi, everyone. I'm Sari, and I'm a sophomore at Clayton this year. And as Dr. Poole said, I am starting this local philanthropic team thing, I guess you could say.

So I kind of wrote a little bit of speech so I tell you guys about it So Honeycomb STL is an organization with the goal to create generations of engaged empowered and experienced Jewish changemakers and givers Honeycomb is building the future of Jewish philanthropy. At Honeycomb STL, members will learn what tzedakah, the Jewish ethical obligation to give, and philanthropy are by doing interactive activities and listening to prominent speakers from our community. We will work throughout the term to raise money and eventually donate it to one or more local organizations. We will also spend time visiting these organizations, volunteering and learning why donations are crucial to them and how they will use that money.

We recently had our first meeting this past month and heard from Maxine Clark, the founder of Build-A-Bear, speak about her life and philanthropic journey. Our next meeting is October 15th at the Del Mar Divine from 11 to 1. If you know any 9th through 12th graders from St. Louis who you think may be interested, you should definitely recommend them.

The best way to learn more if you're interested is the Instagram, honeycomastl, to learn any information and specific details. Thank you, Sari, for your awesome work. If you'd like to take a picture with our superintendent and our president of the board, that would be awesome. We have a certificate for you.

All right, our next student who we want to honor is Grace Wolf. Grace, if you want to come on up. Grace has published her own children's book entitled May I Sit at the Table. And I love the motivation and the story behind it.

Even going back to Sari and what she's accomplished, just the level of the equity mindset and the activist mindset for advocating for others that they have is awesome. So I'm going to let Grace talk about her book. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to be here.

So, yes, I did write a children's book, and I'm a senior at Clayton. And the inspiration for this book came from a culmination of my own experiences, those of my friends in the deaf community, and also my brother Sam. So my brother Sam is 16 years older than me, and he has severe autism. He did the illustrations for the book and has been such a big part of my life.

When he talks, he has a very robotic voice. And because of that, when I'm out in public with him and people kind of hear what he sounds like, they stare at him, laugh at him, etc. Thank you. And the response to this book has been overwhelmingly positive.

I'm really excited to share it with everyone and hopefully see Clayton try to implement this inclusion and empathy in our own programs. So thank you so much. Thank you, Grace. We will definitely look to get those books in our libraries.

Definitely need it. Again, thank you, Sari and Grace, for your awesome work and your commitment to helping others. And that will wrap up our Recognizing Our Own portion for tonight. Thank you.

Okay, I think we are now at a public comment, and I believe we have two. So we are going to start with Michelle Avenader. Come on up. Okay I want to personally thank Amy Rubin for being authentically interested in the success of all students at Clayton School District When my family and I first joined the district, let's see, seven years ago, she reached out and checked in on how my daughter with special needs was doing, And she probably hasn't had a chance to do that for everyone, but I really appreciated that.

So thank you, Amy. Chris Wynn, thank you for attending all the meetings that have been happening since about May, evaluating the success of the collaboration between Special School District and Clayton. Cameron Poole as well, being extremely communicative this past spring with 20 or more emails back and forth And trying to catch up with each other and our intentions and goals. Robin Weins, Nisha Patel, all the other people in special school district.

All of the people who are trying their best to create authentic and clear collaboration. So my name is Michelle Abinader. I'm an educator, a wife, a mother of three boys who are 20, 18, and 16. And I have a fourth child, my beautiful extra 21st chromosome carrying girl named Cricket, who is in sixth grade at White Owl Middle School.

We were drawn to the district by a former Clayton employee who was working with Cricket through first steps. Cricket was two and three years old. She was the physical therapist at the family center of Clayton Preschool, and we were smitten by that school, their regio-emilio culture, philosophy, and when we decided to send her there, Cricket thrived. We thought we might move into the Clayton School District, but we never were able to find a community that we had already established having three older children in our neighborhood in U City.

So we continue to be a tuition-paying Clayton family, and we plan to do so. I have intimate experience personally with five school districts with whom I have been directly involved, either as an employee in the classroom or as a volunteer parent. I will name these five in reverse order from my experience. I also have intimate and direct experience with another district called Special School District.

They do a lot of great things. Back when I was a classroom teacher, my understanding of SSD was vague. I didn't get much training at Mizzou, nor in the district where I taught. I was sort of thrown in.

I was told to read my students' multiple-paged IEPs, but I never really felt like they were my students. So I didn't really put in as much effort as I probably should have. Then I was put on the parent side of the fence the day my fourth child, Cricket, was born in June of 2011. And with our surprise Down syndrome diagnosis, I now knew I would have to read the IEPs.

So from both sides of the fence, one being the teacher side and one being the parent side, I feel like I come to the table knowing a little bit more than the average parent. I have found consistent and frustrating inefficiencies. And I know everyone's hearts are in the right place, but I'm here to say, am I supposed to talk? Is that too long?

Is there a time limit? Oh, shoot. I talk fast, but not fast enough. There are too many hearts.

Too many hearts. And can we talk about it more? Okay. See you tomorrow.

I don't know what else to say. Should I keep going? Oh, okay. If there is any time where we can realize that change is inevitable, the time is now.

If there's any district that can look closely at the inefficiencies of two different districts servicing one child, it's this district. If there's any educator who is in this field for anything but the child, then they shouldn't be here. And I have personally interacted with some employees of a special school district, not just in Clayton, more in other districts, but they are not there for the kids. And our children can't speak for themselves.

They're constantly scrutinized by and expected to interact with many more individuals than the non-IEP students. IEP is the Individualized Education Plan. And they have insecurity in interacting with people anyway. So every year I personally make a point to connect with all of these people to try to make it easier on my daughter.

I call these people the cricket crew. Moving from elementary to middle school this year, my email thread has almost doubled in people with whom my daughter interacts. Of course, because there's individual teachers per grade, I get that. I taught middle school.

But there's this whole other set of teachers, and honestly, all of these teachers don't even know each other, so how can that really work for the child? And the one person who services the child the most, and is the absolutely most critical to their success, In my experience is the paraprofessional who is muffled and asked not to interact with the parents. And when they do interact with me, because that's the only way to create success for the child, they ask me not to share that with their supervisors because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble. So it's a system that needs evaluation and simplification.

So to whom do these students belong? Clayton or SST? I can say Clayton School District is very unique in that they have this thing called the Family Center, the preschool where they hire their employees under their own umbrella of Clayton to service the kids with IEPs. They get to know the children.

There's no attrition. There's no movement. I actually personally work there now. So my ask is this, can we take the Family Center model and try to recreate it in some fashion, maybe start with one or two elementary schools or all of them?

It totally works, and I know they're now, as a sub, working there, and last year as a paraprofessional, I really think we can figure out how we can educate these children better with diversity, equity, and inclusion all day long. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Paul Crow?

Hey, Paul. Good evening. Thanks, everyone, for taking time. Thanks to the board for your efforts and service.

It is much appreciated by parents of typical and my child alike, right? So, again, my name is Paul Crow. My daughter, Maggie, is a freshman at Clayton High School. And I want to take you through a brief journey of our experience.

And most specifically, with the Spervantage, the administration. While everything is good intended, we are falling flat as joint administrations between the school district of Clayton and special school district. This is not a teacher issue. This is not a day-to-day issue.

This is a systemic issue at the next level of leadership. And overall, I think there's overall confidences in the process. So I'll start with, again, my daughter Maggie is a freshman at Clayton High School and received significant services from SSD. Through the past few years, COVID on really, we have challenged both the school district of Clayton and special school district to elevate their service accordingly.

And I haven't eaten dinner yet. A little shaky here, but they have really, truly, unfortunately failed at every mark. Last February, my wife Jenny and I endured a series of meetings with the special school district and Clayton admin alike to no avail in driving positive change. In August, we went on and experienced a series of listening sessions.

Quickly, we figured out that this was a process that we were going to arduously have to go through. And what you have in front of you tonight is not representative of the advent of those meetings. Clearly not. So I asked the board that you can either table the Section 8 tonight and vote at a later date when you're fully informed of what needs to happen, or you can vote tonight uninformed.

That's your choice, right? But I would highly recommend that you hear the full story from everyone involved in this. We asked for multiple reasons for a third party to host the listening sessions. Right?

That was not accommodated. We have one of the world-class facilitators right across Shaw Park and Chapman and Company. I'll pay for it. That's how serious I am.

It needs to change. We need to be heard, and it needs to be completely appropriate to drive positive change in this organization. So, I highly recommend that you do that in this process so that we're heard and we hear the voices of our children with needs that don't have voices. So, please, I implore you, table for two weeks.

Be fully informed in the vote. We got the summary this morning. I canceled my afternoon of meetings to read it. I showed up tonight canceling the trip.

Please do the same. Okay Thank you Paul and Michelle for your comments We appreciate it and we going to talk about this later on in our study session But for right now, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Patel for her superintendent comments. Okay, thank you, Amy.

Good evening, everyone. I want to continue, before we get into the presentation portion of tonight, I do want to continue with a little bit more of recognizing our own with one additional student, and I want to highlight this person because we just got the news today, earlier today about it. We have a senior named Rachel Chung who was awarded a surprise scholarship today, a four-year scholarship to the NROTC. It's a very competitive scholarship.

Very few students in the area receive the scholarship. It is a four-year, basically, scholarship to attend this, and it's based on academics, so your SAT, ACT. It's based on your commitment to the military world. Spervantage, Bord of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I'm not sure how many of us in the audience know or people watching, but in 1957, St. Louis County voters, through a referendum, actually established a special school district. So they voted for it, special school district was established, and not only that, they also voted for a tax levy. So we as residents of St.

Louis County fund special school district, and they in turn give us services. So for us in the School District of Clayton, we have 287 students that are serviced by Special School District. That's roughly 11% of our population, including about, I want to say, 48, 49 staff members that are fully employed by Special School District through that tax levy that was approved. So each year we come to the table, we come to the board table, and we go through this presentation where we share the partnership agreement, which is the same template that's used in all 22 districts that's serviced by special school district.

Today, you'll notice it is different. We have the template, but what we've added is 22 additional action steps to help address all of the concerns that have been brought to us by our parents. And absolutely, I will be the first one to say it, and we have said that at every community forum that we started. We have definitely areas that we need to improve on.

I'm not denying that. None of us are trying to hide behind the fact. And the biggest two things for me that I heard from our parents in the last two community forums, one was we need a change in culture. The culture of, no, we can't do this.

Here's a barrier. Here's a barricade. Here's obstacles that they were facing. So we need to change our paradigm mindset in terms of making it a culture of yes.

And then the second thing was parent involvement. And what does that look like? Like input from our parents. Are we truly listening?

And then are we making changes accordingly to that? We have 287 students that we service, and yes, we have to look at every single child and how we're approaching that, right? So one of the things that we put together tonight that we're going to present to you is the partnership agreement. We're not going to go each step into each of the 22 action steps, but we're going to give you an overview.

We put it on board docs, and we shared it with the board on Friday, and it was on board docs from Monday for people to view. However, I also understand that not everybody can navigate board docs. So tonight we're hoping to go through each one of those steps and kind of give everyone an overview. And most importantly, really, to say, how are we going to know a year from now if we made any progress?

How are we going to hold ourselves accountable? Equality Opportunity to gain it back And for us this is our first step To say yes we will deploy parent surveys The parents can help create the survey We deploy it each semester and you tell us how we doing Are we doing better Are we not We come back to the board We do it tonight but we come back at the end of the semester and next semester and give you an update Here where we at Here what the parents are saying that we still falling short or we doing great in these areas So that the board is fully informed about that as well. Third party. From the minute, I think it was the last meeting that Mr.

Crow actually did, he suggested, he's like, we need to get a third party in here. We need to have someone come facilitate it. The superintendent of SSD and I have been talking about that. In fact, just this afternoon, she and I had a phone conversation.

Who do we need to get? How do we get that person to come in here? We didn't put it in the agreement because that doesn't need to be in an agreement. That's not part of this.

This is something that we would fund and take care of and have. What does this come? What does it look like? Who's the third party?

Is it a company? Is it someone that specializes that has knowledge in SSD services? We need to find the right person. And absolutely no one is against that idea.

Bring them in. In fact, help them facilitate it. They can be they can give us their opinion based on everything they're hearing from you and based on what we're trying to do. And I do think that's a great way to do it.

So we will go that way. We just need to find the right person to do that. Our next meeting is going to be on October 11th, I believe, or the 12th, October 12th, for another community forum to say, okay, what are we doing now? Where are we headed?

And maybe it's time to like now actually start creating the survey or the accountability tool in terms of parent feedback. Okay. So we do have a lot of things that we've got in place, but we need to start that as well. And tonight is just the first step of that.

So with that, I am going to now hand it over to our student board rep, who's going to also give an update, because I know this came up as a topic from the student perspective as well. And then we're going to have the presentation. Okay. Yeah, at the recent SPSA meeting, our discussion revolved around how to support fellow students with IEP plans or special needs.

And what we found as a group is that we agree that any challenges that were difficult for students who don't need extra support were especially hard for students who did. And so when we looked at regarding schedules and regarding just year-long plans in general when it came to the start of the year, we found that students really needed help and it really needed some more support than that was given. And so in general, when we were looking at the Clayton culture of inclusivity of our students, we saw that it was ultimately really positive on the student side. Within educational aspects, we, you know, to empathize with someone you must understand.

And we found that with many of the students at Clayton High School, they were throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, were given the chance to either learn or were open to learn about others at their school. And so what we can see is that we have at Clayton a shared level of awareness in overall respect, which is really great to see. And so when we're thinking about maybe making more district-wide changes or changes within the classroom or outside the classroom, students who need that support are and will be taken into account by the student body around them. Everyone really cares and really wants to see and make a difference.

And as a group, we couldn't even think of a single instance where we saw that another student treated another student who was, you know, like everyone is just really inclusive and great in the Clayton High School atmosphere, at least. And so we also at the SPSA meeting talked a little bit about sixth grade camp. We all know it's coming next week. And we were thinking about whole level grade experiences and how in the Clayton School District that really unifies a class and makes them really excited to go to school and to learn with teachers they've been seeing all week and really creates those stepping stones for high school and eventual graduation.

And one thing we did find, though, is that high schoolers who end up going back as counselors or even eighth graders who go back as CITs really struggle with workload when it comes to teachers. Teachers not really recognizing the amount of time it takes at sixth grade camp to be working with these sixth graders. And so we were generally thinking and encouraging high school teachers to maybe attend a day of camp, see what's going on, see how important it is for the overall Clayton environment. And also just in general you know the high schoolers really make the 6th grade camp a great experience so it would be great to see more help put in place for those who happen to attend And then finally, this recent Monday we had a C-Day, and this was recently implemented because of student concerns.

And what we saw was it overall worked out really well. You know, the goal was to help our Jewish student population, and what we found was when we We look at, for example, the profile of a Clayton graduate, cultural competency. Everyone, the students and the teachers, really took that in mind when planning their lesson plans and looking throughout the day. One thing that was really great is students were really aware of why the C-Day was happening.

I think that was very much the goal of making sure everyone sort of understood why we were taking a specific day off for a C-Day and how we We should put that into our day-to-day one, maybe wishing someone a happy holiday or just going to school. And so while most teachers did take into account the holiday into their syllabus, some teachers I heard still barreled through and just kept going with their assignments and what they were teaching in class. However, because of the C-day schedule with the 45 minutes per class, it really ended up not students missed less than they would have last year. And so when we look at overall with Clayton students, whether it comes to increasing accommodations or changing the schedule, the students are really adaptable to changes made by the board.

And so we are in general really excited and open to any new changes made in the future regarding anything that comes that will help out the district. Thank you so much. That's really good input. Does anybody have any questions?

Okay, we appreciate it. Okay, SSD partnership. Good evening, School Board of Clayton. It's a privilege to be up here to give you an update on the partnership agreement between the special school district and the School District of Clayton.

I want to introduce Melissa Logan, who's the Special Education Director assigned to Clayton from the Special School District. And then we also have Dr. Elizabeth Keenan, our Superintendent from Special School District, joining us too. Thank you for having us tonight.

The first thing we wanted to go over was the overview. So, IDEA requires states and districts to have in effect policies, procedures, programs that are consistent with the federal policies and procedures concerning the provision of special education. So, within that, we have the Missouri State Plan, Local Compliance Plan, and then tonight we're going to drill down to our general assurance documents, district policies, and procedures. So, we're going to go into our partnership agreement.

And what the purpose of the partnership agreement across our 22 districts that we have. Increased knowledge and awareness of expectations, the inclusive and collaborative approach, the tool it is to monitor our collaborative leadership, decision making, and practices in seven categories. And it also guides our conversations with our districts. Within that, we have seven categories that we hit on within each one.

So we have staffing, teaching, learning, and accountability, the collaboration of our responsibilities and resources, student services, data and technology, transportation, and our CTE program, career and technical education. So as Dr. Patel mentioned earlier this evening, we won't necessarily be going through all the nuts and bolts of the template of the different categories. As part of the partnership agreement, instead we're going to use our time this evening to focus on some of the action steps that we hope to accomplish during this school year.

So how did we create those action steps? Well, first of all, we have hosted two community engagement forums and invited all of our families of students with disabilities, not just students who are served by IEPs, but also we welcomed families whose students had 504s to join us as well. Our first forum, we had several listening stations set up with different facilitators from the school district of Clayton and special school district focused on gathering feedback on the student family experience, our communication, the partnership agreement itself, and then transitions between the various school Buildings, particularly between fifth grade to sixth grade, and then eighth grade to ninth grade, and then twelfth grade and beyond. We also held a second forum where we presented draft action steps that were created based on the feedback from the first forum and created opportunities for folks to give us feedback on that.

In addition, before those forums and after those forums, families were given an opportunity to meet individually. We had a lot of individual meetings with families who had reached out to us before we held the forums, in between the forums, and then met with a couple more families after the forums. We also met with our principals as a large group and individually to get their feedback on the action steps that we had shared with families. And we also got feedback from our special education building leaders.

So obviously we have special education staff sprinkle up throughout all of our buildings, and there are specific leads within each building that Melissa also works with directly. And we were able to get some of their input as well. So we wanted to highlight some of the action steps in several of the categories that are part of our partnership agreement. Again, as Dr.

Patel said earlier, you can find a more detailed version of these action steps posted on BoardDocs. So the first category was focused on staffing. And one of the things that we were able to glean from our family meetings as well as our forums was really the need to increase our transparency through more frequent and specific communication with our families. One of those areas where we could improve upon was our staffing and the communication about our staffing.

And one of the other things that we heard related to that was understanding not just what our current staffing model was and how we got there, but also what the trends were over time with how we allocate the various staff members. In category two, related to teaching, learning, and accountability, again, a lot of the feedback that we heard was knowing, one, what the data was on the performance of our students with disabilities, both at a high level, but also at an individual family level, and then also understanding how that data had changed over time. So what were the trends for a specific student and what were the trends for our entire community of students who are currently receiving special education services? Another piece of that was making sure that we're communicating that information to our community in a variety of pathways.

So thinking about how we share that with individual families about the progress of their own child. How do we share that with the building community and how do we share that with both our teaching staff and our greater community in terms of all of our families whose students receive special services? Category three was around that collaboration of responsibility and resources. So things we have put in place and we've continued is a special education building leader has been identified and goes to all the building leader meetings and has that voice for special education and then goes back to the team to let them know of what's happening and how we can make sure the students are supported and included in all activities.

We've also had, I've had director or principal meetings, one-on-ones monthly with the principals, where we're also talking about the student needs, what's happening, and what they need from me. We've also created a contact list, so you know who to go to for things. The first contact is always that case manager teacher, and then we've listed other people that they can go to if they have questions. We have an ongoing parent input through our communication engagement forums that we've created and PAC-Ed.

We've had two events already, the morning meetup at Glenridge and charting the life course event that we've also been part of. And within category four, student services. So this is where we are looking at our transitions from early childhood to kindergarten to fifth to sixth grade, eighth to ninth grade, and even post-secondary. How can we help smooth that transition and have everyone together part of the table to know what's available?

Beginning of the year activities, we were part of the Meet the Teacher curriculum night. We even hosted for the ninth grade families an opportunity to meet their case manager. Engaging with Office of Equity and Inclusion, we've pulled in Dr. Poole and Dr.

Macklin from Special School District to help us come up with some PD opportunities for the teachers. SEL data collection through the panorama and then we're exploring some additional summer experiences for our students. Some takeaways from our community engagement and how we going to track how we doing is really looking at that relationship and trust So communication we really looking at that building to teacher to families to make sure they know what happening within their school and what the opportunities are We're also personalizing that communication to families, too, to let them know what to expect, what it will look like, such as the panorama. We let them know what was happening, how we were going to make sure visuals would be provided for some students and things like that.

We're also looking for that stronger feedback loop from the parents to us at the school setting too. And then we're going to be able to see how we're doing through the surveys that we've mentioned that we're going to create together, the student data looking at that academic and social-emotional data, and the professional learning that we're providing to the teachers. And before we open it up to questions, I also want to share with the board that as a participant in many of the family meetings that we've conducted individually, as well as facilitator in the first two community engagement forums, I want to reiterate what Dr. Patel said earlier, is that we absolutely know that we can improve in this area and that we are very committed to improving the quality of the experience that our families of students and families of students are experiencing.

I'm going to take a moment to thank the Board of Education, the Board of Education, and the Board of Education, for the work that the students with disabilities have had, and we know that we need to put a lot of work into improving those relationships to reestablish the trust. And as the Assistant Superintendent of Student Services, I want to let you know that I take full ownership of the missed opportunities where I could have led differently to make this work be elevated much quicker. Making sure that I partner with Melissa Logan as well as Dr. Keenan's team to make sure that we are continuing to make decisions that are rooted in the data that we collect from our families and from our students and from our staff to make sure that moving forward we're continuing to make progress and really improving the experience of our families overall.

And if I may, I'd like to make a comment too in terms of the listening sessions Thank you. Thank you. The other part of it, too, was transitions were really clearly that we need to make sure that the transition that parents are informed, not only for kids going from elementary to middle school, but middle school to high school, well in advance, planning preparation. Parents want to prepare their students over the summer so they don't find out about the classes and their courses in August.

They want to know prior to that, and we can do those. So the goal around this is this feedback that our parents are giving is to give us the time to continue to work with them to build out the surveys, to build out, get feedback. We are not saying that we want you to adopt this without parent input. The timing is we've always had this done between we offer this, we go over this with our board in June.

We have the boards adopt this in September and the final signing of it in October. So where we are saying is engaging with our families here in Clayton, the commitment to make sure that we are supporting them. We started that in August. We've done it in September.

We have a long ways to go in terms of it, but the information they provided us, we need to continue to build these pieces out. It's not that we're waiting to advance on any of these action plans until we put it all into one plan. We're already implementing pieces of it and we can be able to bring our parents together to be able to facilitate this and to say how is this working and how do we improve this. One of the other biggest things that our parents really said was, and this really kind of spoke to me in terms of how do we support our students with special needs in Clayton.

When their experience of going to college unless you going to Princeton unless you going to Harvard the parents of our special needs students don really feel like they having that experience to be able to say what are options for my child I want to go to college. What's worked through that? Outside of a sheltered workshop, we need to make sure that we're supporting our families and that we are giving them opportunities to think about starting in middle school. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

the the the the the the We have expectations for them no matter where their levels are at. The last part of it that they've talked about too is activities after school. And that is a big thing too. How do we have students to be able to participate and to be able to be supported in those participation whether it's in sports or activity or clubs after school.

We had a great meeting with the principals. They accepted, you know, like how do we plan for this to make sure that if a child has a support system to be successful in the school day, that we automatically start planning for that so that they are able to do the same thing after school. I don't want to go too much on this, but what our parents have said is it is not falling on deaf ears. We are wanting to make sure we work through these things.

This will help us all get better. We can do this. There's a willingness to do it, and we want them to drive it. We want them to continue to feedback, give us feedback to drive it and to say how we're doing.

The recommendation that was at the last meeting at the very end, like Dr. Patel said, Spervantage, This agreement's been put together. 22 districts do it. We've had other districts where we've had to keep working through it.

And this just helps us really create, well, how do we make sure we're making this unique to Clayton? There's a template here, but we know that there's different needs that we want to establish here. And we're open to that, and just open to it, we will achieve that. And so we just need the time to be able to build that out and update the board and make sure by next year, even in the spring of the year, that we know what this is going to look like and it's customized for here and for Clayton.

And it's driven by parents' input. Okay, thank you for the presentation. I know we all have a lot of questions, so I'm going to go around the room and start with Jason to make sure that we all have a chance to talk tonight. Great.

First of all, I just want to say I appreciate all the comments that have been made about this agreement. And Robin, I just want to, especially your comment at the end about just taking ownership over the program for the district, I thought that was very well said. And I appreciate the accountability that you're taking for yourself and for all of us. So I just have a few questions, wanting to drill down and getting a little more specific about some of the good stuff that you guys were saying.

This is all in the mindset of making sure that we have a culture of improvement, open communication, all that good stuff that we all want. And also just educating you a little bit. So can you guys talk to me a little bit about, you know, I heard some of the activities that happened, but like what does that actual parent feedback look like today? What is it going to look like under these action steps, and how frequently does that loop happen?

So it's going to take the shape of many things, but I'll outline a couple. So the first is that we across both central office teams we met with quite a few families individually who either we reached out to to get additional voices or to learn more about some of the thoughts and the feedback that they shared in those particular Thank you So, when a student's final IEP is finalized in the online system, they do receive a survey automatically once it has been finalized. So, one of the pieces of feedback that we got at the forum was that that survey is really long and then the time between when they have physically met with the case manager and the special ed team and general ed team and the time at which they received the survey that there is some lag time. So one of the ideas that we'd like to work on is figuring out what is a more abbreviated version of a feedback loop so right when families finish their meeting process, we could share it with them and get really quick and fast feedback that's more immediate that can be shared back with the team, as well as what Dr.

Patel shared as well as co-creating a more family-facing survey that could be given twice a year so we can take the temperature basically in the middle of the year, make any mid-course corrections, and then give it again toward the end of the year. And one of the other pieces of feedback we got from our families was that when we do set these feedback mechanisms off into motion to make sure that we're being really transparent with the feedback that we're getting and making sure that we're sharing back out to the community of this is what our parents are telling us their IEP experience is like and this is what our parents are telling us what their overall experience in the district is like as it relates to their child who has a disability. So we're going to be working on that and making sure that we are sharing that information back out, that it's not just being looked at by the administrative team here in Clayton and at SSD, but we're also sharing that information back out to our families and letting them know what we're doing about it. Okay, awesome.

Thanks. Next question. I know you guys had the second meeting to get the feedback from parents who attended on the agreement. Can you give us maybe one or two examples of a place where you tweet in this year's action steps directly based on that feedback?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one example of the evolution of the action steps was after the initial forum, one of our action steps was about providing professional learning specifically around charting the life course for staff. After the second forum, we got additional feedback that there was a lot of interest in providing staff with more training through SSD around social, emotional, behavioral support for students and using one of the SEB specialists from special to lead that training for Clayton staff. And then in a follow-up meeting after the second forum with an individual family that I met with, was talking more about our social-emotional learning survey tools and really digging deeper into a concern that was shared at the second forum that our panorama surveys are not the most suitable for our students who are nonverbal or have limited communication skills.

And even with modifications in the administration of that, that the data that we're getting from that is not valuable in helping support those students. So I had a great meeting with an individual family about what it could look like and then getting pointed in the direction of some other resources and then also it has given me some ideas of looking at some of the tools we currently have and how we might be able to alter them to get feedback not just from a parent but also from the teachers who are supporting a student who might be nonverbal. So in that professional learning action step, it is now more comprehensive than just charting the life course, but also focusing on social-emotional behavioral work, post-secondary opportunities in terms of educating counselors and other folks who help guide families through that process, and then executive functioning and then looking at social-emotional learning tools. So that's one example.

There's another one you wanted to add. Awesome. Thanks. Can you talk about, someone's made a mention that just, you know, this action plan, sort of indicating that this may be sort of like an ongoing, evolving thing.

Maybe talk to us a little bit about what happens to this action plan from here, how does it get, how does this plan get improved, how does this set up for future years, and how do parents have, you know, their say in that or their input and fingerprints on that? Part of it is Robin and I meet and kind of go over where are we and continue to look at our action steps. Where have we improved and where do we need to continue to grow in? And so we're always evaluating beginning of the year.

We do it at the end of the year and again at the beginning of this school year too, again, just to see to wrap everything around and make sure we have everyone's voice too. And that's why we also gave it to our building leaders to get their feedback. So the way we're envisioning this process is to make sure the initial first one was the four areas to get feedback on it. The parents are wanting to make sure that they have input into this agreement.

So going into this October meeting is to be able to look at this action plan, but also the feedback that has been provided by one of the parents to us. To be able to kind of say, now let's make sure we can tweak this to make sure that this is part of building this in as a plan going forward. The other part of it, like Robin had said, we want to make sure that they're having input into designing the surveys that are going back for the feedback from an IEP meeting. And then being able to look at the process of when we're serving the students, what are those questions?

The parents want to know those pieces so that we're preparing the students. So they're going to be able to see those questions and to be able to participate in saying, how do we know, when is this going to happen so we can prepare them? It's this, both documents and the feedback is really saying parents want voice. And being able to let them know about it, show them this, give feedback so that when things are rolled out, they're aware and that they're understanding and that they can prepare their students and they are prepared to equally.

So the goal is to be able to build this feedback into the plan, look at the action steps, and to be able to say how are we measuring this? And really I want to dive a little bit more into what are those tangible markers to show success, to show improvement, and to be able to really involve the parents in the process and how we're communicating and getting feedback. Okay. Okay.

Just one more comment, then I'll stop. But I was just happy to hear that Dr. Macklin, Dr. Poole are working together.

I had a chance to see Dr. Macklin present last fall at MSBA, and it seems like you guys are doing some really great work when it comes to DEI work. So happy to see that and hope it continues. Yes, absolutely.

Thanks. I've got one here. Great. So thanks for the presentation and the materials that you presented.

I'm going to ask questions too coming from a much shallower base of knowledge and others that have been attending meetings. But when I see the action steps and the action plans that you're taking, what's difficult for me to ascertain is what the baseline is. I mean, how are you going to measure this unless you know where you're starting from? And so it's very difficult for me as a board Member to know, I mean, it seems like we are having a mea culpa as a district, as a collective special school district, but a mea culpa from where?

Where are we failing? How badly are we failing? And how do you measure improvement if you don't have a baseline to start with? And I don't frankly see that reflected in any of the as evidenced by when I go through the documents.

So I'm wondering, are you going to share that baseline? Is there a baseline? How have you been measuring yourself so far outside of the IEPs. And those are the questions that I have just kind of from an objective lens looking at this from the outside in.

So maybe let's start with that. I don't know. I think it's a great question, too, because as you're reading it, it's like we have to start where are we at and then get more specific. So that's where we're going to start to drill down into pieces of this because you can see even with the feedback from the parents, it's like they're saying, well, how are we measuring that?

And we have to build those targets. So do you not know where you're at? Well, there's a lot of information in there. So, you know, it's like there are pieces where we know we're at.

And so how do we make sure we build that into where we're at currently and to be able to build that? So it's just saying, and if we don't have it, how do we make sure we start to make sure we are building what that's going to look like? So there's seven different areas in the partner agreement. There's information in the action steps.

And then we have to be more specific. Build that in. We can build some of those Spervantage, Let alone where the things you have might start at. So is that information available at all?

I mean, yes. We just have to put it in together into the document. Does our district have that information, Robin? Yeah so we would have baseline data around social learning We would have baseline data on Which may not be accurate based on parent feedback as far as the student ability to actually participate in those surveys Yes, and then we would be introducing potentially as one of the action steps is wanting us to look at other tools that we could add into the mix as a measurement for students who would need an alternative survey tool.

Okay, let me maybe get more specific. Let's just go to page three, Category 1, Staffing. As evidenced by teacher fill percentage, para-fill percentage, SSD, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Surely you know the baseline of what your vacancy rate is for teachers, what your turnover rates are for paraprofessionals, what your target is for your paraprofessional ratio to students.

Why is it not here? And that's what we're saying is we have to build that into that, put those baseline pieces into it. But you're measuring it now or you're not yet measuring it? We have all that information.

We're 100% filled in the paras and all the staffing. There's zero vacancies. Okay. And I mean, it's really, it's kind of as evidenced by on every category, right, when I look through this?

And again, it's very difficult for me as a board member of this district, and I know that you serve 22 districts, Spererntino, I think that's the one I would say, but I think that's the first one. What I think just as a second question, is the question, is it just that you have to I'd like to see it. I'm guessing other members of the board would like to see it. And then my last question, I guess, and then I'll pass it along so we can get it around the table here is, you know, you said that you're going to implement this for our district.

Why would you not implement it across all 22 districts? If it's good for our district and there are special needs students in all districts that you're serving, why not through the other 21? Wouldn't it be easier, even just from an accountability standpoint within the partnerships that you have, if what's good for the goose is good for the gander? Absolutely.

And that's what we can do with this. Basically, when we're looking at this, with each part of this, we need to add in that data component, where are we currently at, and where is our goal for this year to improve? That's the specific information you're asking for. And it's absolutely, it's the right question to ask because what this is is more the generic pieces of it, but underneath it, build that template to say where are we currently at with the paras, with the teachers, the vacancies, all that stuff, and making sure that that's consistently added in so that is it.

So your question around why wouldn't we do this, build this for this area, and we can implement it in other districts too. Okay, and I'm sorry, I said I only had one more, but I have just one last one. So the request for a moderator, my guess is that is because there's a lack of a common language, perhaps, between the parents that are asking for this information and our school district, the special school district. Can you give me some insight into why we now think that a moderator is a good idea to help to, I mean, I come from the corporate world, right?

We use moderators and arbitrators all the time, and you usually bring them in when there is an inability to communicate directly across the table Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And that was the request made. And so for us, coming in, we were saying, we are willing to work. We are willing to do everything that you're requesting, but having an outside perspective, coming in unbiased, without any judgment, to listen to parent voice, listen to our voice, come to some sort of agreement with that.

Mm-hmm. It's kind of like our Jessica, somebody like Jessica that we hired before. Social-emotional wellness center. Okay.

I have other questions, but I'll pass the mic. Thank you, Al, for being here. I think it probably clear by now that we all have a lot of questions and want to engage in this in a way that responds to feedback that we gotten including tonight I will admit that I have not been recently as engaged in this as maybe I would like to have been. So I have a few questions around some of the timing that has come out.

But before I get into that, I do want to say that I feel a very high degree of confidence, both in our own district here in Clayton and the people that are responsible for all of this and implementing all the things that we're talking about here. I also feel a high degree of confidence in Special School District and Dr. Keenan and your staff and the people that are committed to that. I feel fortunate to have gotten to know that district and see how it works and see how the partnership and the collaboration works.

And I'm thankful for that. But those feelings of confidence are based largely on sort of direct and personal experience. And I don't know that that is something that all of our community and all of our parents can have, have the same perspective. And also, I know that people have very different personal and kind of individual experiences.

So I think, I just want to say that up front, that I do believe in the way that we do this and the work and the professionals, and I want to support that, and asking questions about that does not in any way reflect a lack of confidence in that. But I do think that we need to hear some of those questions from people who don't have that same level of confidence. I'm a little bit confused about the timing. And this may be, again, like maybe I have, I mean, it's an extremely hectic time in my life the last couple of weeks, so I may have missed some of this.

But it sounds like there have both been some parent meetings, but also some of this has just only recently, particularly the action steps based on feedback that we got today, been seen by the parent groups. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. When we, Special School District every year in May and June, kind of overlapping with this, we always have the partnership agreement.

We go over that. We present it at our board meeting. We present it to governing council. So it's just a cycle that we normally do.

The timing of this, which your question is a good question in terms of, well, the timing of the parent concerns came up and we recognizing it, hearing it at our level, wanting to do something, but this is kind of like coming in at the same time. We're just starting to engage in some of these deeper conversations to get into it. So two sessions we had. Both sessions were about two, two and a half hours with our parents.

And so we need some time to surface and get through this so that we can get into how do we make sure that we're addressing and documenting and getting the right information into this document to show the growth. So those two things are coming in at the same time The time is just not there for us right now The time is we need more time to work with the parents to build this and to build it at the same time we are actually not waiting to do some action items that we can still put these pieces and start making adjustments but to be able to say let build this plan Superroportionate Proposition O levy agenda motion carried We can bring back more of that. That's not going to give us enough time, though, with our parents. We're meeting with them on the 12th.

We're still working for another two hours or with them two and a half hours. So it's going to give us some information, but it's not going to give all. You're asking some great questions about how we can make this a better document in terms of the clarity of what's actually happening in each, in Clayton and other districts. That's appropriate so we can build that baseline.

So the dilemma is we still have some work to do. We still have that trust piece to work through. We have to build that data. And we're building that ship right now where there's this on top of it.

So the agreement approval does not have to be, it can be contingent on the ongoing work we're doing. And to be able to say we're committed to that work and that we'll get feedback and we'll give updates to the board. And then I ask that those updates are equally presented and supported with our parents to be able to have that voice too. So that you're hearing directly from them too.

Not only did we have the meeting in June or July with the two parents to kind of be the catalyst for the community engagement forums, but prior to that, we've had individual parents that have come up that have expressed concerns. They've met with Dr. Weems. They've met with Melissa.

They've met with Dr. Poole. So we had concerns that were coming from before, too. But truly when Dr.

Keenan and I sat down with that one family this summer, that's when we started saying, okay, we need to put structures in place and community forums in place in August to get voices in the room, more voices. So I'm hearing a lot of, I think, good things. And I mean, this is a good conversation to understand this better. I'm hearing that we want parents to drive this, that we need their engagement in order to have this process be improved, not just when we approve this, but throughout a longer-term process.

I guess the question, you know, this is also, I mean, as an agreement, this is really, you know, it's a partnership agreement. It's very much, it's a little different than some of the agreements that we look at all the time. It's not one party will do this and the other. Like everything in here is SSD and partner district will do, you know, and that's the whole thing.

So in terms of the timing of when it's formally approved or things like that, it's not as if we're waiting for it to happen. We're waiting to start doing things until this gets approved. Those things are happening now. We're improving on the way those things are happening now as it goes.

I think that's all. I think I'm representing that accurately. So I guess my question, a bit of a roundabout way to get to that is, in light of that, if what we really need is for the parents, including the ones we've heard from, to be more a part of and feel a trust with you that this is happening, does some amount of time before we say to you, yes, we're all good and we're signed up on this, Does that help your ability and everyone's ability to work together to continue to improve this? That was a very long question.

I don't know if I even ever asked a question, actually. But is some delay in making a formal statement about this helpful to you in building the confidence that you need to get the partnership, to let the parents drive it, as you said? Yeah. Dr.

Patel? Yes, the answer to this is yes, we can vote on it on October, when's our next meeting? 11th. 12th, October 12th.

But what I will say to you is between now and October 12th, we'll get a few more emails, which we've already received two on things that we could change, right? So just because you've approved this does not mean that we're not going to go back and change it or, you know, adjust it accordingly. Exactly. To me, we've said our strategic plan is an evergreen model.

So is this. So we had a parent who was emailed Saying a lot, it gave us a lot of feedback on terms of like, and I have her draft here as a matter of fact. And one of the things is like under as evidenced by, give us like parent survey results, the 360 degree performance standards, which is already included in the action step in the back where we're saying we're creating a survey from parents that's going to be developed by parents. We're going to deploy it once a semester.

So I think there's just like verbiage things that we need to clean up. I think that was, yeah, that was enough. Okay, so I appreciate the presentation. I don't have a problem necessarily with the agreement per se.

I think it's lacking a couple important components for me as an attorney that I would want in there. And some of this is like anecdotally what I've heard from parents. What I'm hearing is one of the things that's one of the major frustrations is some of the staffing that is being sent to the district from SSD, That there's a disconnect between the parents and the people. And that parents aren't feeling heard.

They're not able to connect with the person. The person isn't, you know, there's a lot of raw emotions, I think. And there's a lot of, you know, parents with special needs children. I think there's a lot going on.

I think it takes a special personality probably to be able to connect with the parents. We want, as a district, we want to make sure that we have the right person there. And so I think, you know, what I see lacking in here is our ability to say, you know, we want to be collaborative, but if it's not working, then we have the ability to request a change in staffing at our sole and absolute discretion and that that gets promptly accommodated. And then also our ability to amend the agreement.

I mean, I would vote on it tonight or on the 12th, and just our general ability to amend this agreement on an as, you know, we'll collaborate on the ability to have it amended on an as-needed basis. So those would be my two comments. Comments, and I don't know if that's like SSD needs to take that back to legal or, well, that was what I would like to see those two things added to the agreement. And I think the amendment pieces, that's just going to enhance the document.

Sure. So that as we start to continue to work with our parents and as things come out of our meetings, we can add that in there and we can update that to the board. That will be that continuation, as you were saying, Dr. Patel, in terms of we don't have to wait and build it all in there until the end of the year.

We can build it and say we've got this is the survey, here's the results of the staffing pieces, and get more data so that we can update that and that the board will be getting that. If anything, through this piece of it, this is going to make everybody much more aware of how we all work together. And I think that is truly the spirit of this document. Our parents are just saying we need to live that on a daily basis.

And that the more we do that and the more we show this in this document, the more it keeps everybody accountable for this agreement. But if it's not working, I mean, we as the district don't want to have to wait a year before we get a new person. Exactly. We need it to happen promptly.

Right? Well, let Stacy go and then you go because I just want to make sure that, is it okay? Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry. So what did we know going on today? What happened? I don't know.

I mean, I think that what Dr. Patel is saying is that we circulated this. I think we asked for parent feedback. A few parents gave us feedback.

I don't know that it's like totally critical. I mean, if I'm saying something wrong, that it would be to vote on it tonight. But I do think we wanna have it voted on soon so we have the agreement in place. Because I feel like him and I feel like Gary This is like out of the blue for me You know like it incomplete It's missing data.

Was this circulated? I'm sorry. So, yeah, you're cool. I mean, we...

I'm sorry, I don't mean to overdub, but it's on the same line. I'll be quiet, I'll skip my turn if I need to. No, no, no, we don't want that. I'm going to say, but I'm just saying, you know, when we read this, it's like.

So some of the things I think that we're talking about, I don't think necessarily, Gary, you could chime in, are necessarily things that we would incorporate into the agreement per se. I think they're more, they might be action steps or additional, I don't know that they would get incorporated into the agreement, But I do think that it's important that as a board we have an understanding of what they are. And that's why I say, that's why I went back to that we have the ability to amend it. So that way if we're not seeing the data that we want to see, that then we can always amend the agreement.

Not to necessarily incorporate it, but to require something additional. Is that in terms and conditions somewhere here? Where is that? Where's evidence that it can be amended?

Well, that's why I just said that there was two things that in my brain were lacking from the agreement. One was the ability to amend it. If the district feels like it needs to be amended to include additional terms because something isn't working, that we can amend it. And then the staffing issue that we can...

Well, what about, just one last question. So if we vote on it tonight, what's the incentive of people rushing to get this stuff done fast enough and get everything we need to make a complete document? If I vote on it tonight, we can scratch this out through December. Well, no, because they would be in breach of the contract if we weren't happy with some of the terms Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I read it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I slept with a holiday in last night.

I'm saying the same thing they're saying, that this is what that is. And so I just want to make sure that, you know, if we were to vote on this tonight, that things get done. Because when I read this document, I was like, yeah, go ahead, go for it. And now I'm here, I'm like, shit, there's a lot going on here.

I had no idea. Anyone else is cool with it, but I'm not cool with it. Well, it has been, and there have, I think Dr. Patel's, in all of her Friday memos, she's been updating us every week on what's going on.

I need an email. I can't just get it buried Friday. But she emails it on Fridays. Send me an email, man.

This is what we're going on. Keep me updated. I just feel like I see the memos, and it's cool to read them, and sometimes I have to say, man, I might not catch that one until like the next week. It's been everyone, though.

Has everybody else? I don't know. Yes. This is pretty severe.

This is pretty severe. I should probably get an email about this. I can assure you to your question about what if we vote tonight and things aren't going to get done until December, right? Like to that point, I can assure you that we have full commitment in making this work.

Whether we put it in the document or not, we are going to get this done. As a superintendent of the School District of Clayton, I am telling you we are committed to getting it done. I believe you. We have put action steps in place.

We have put action, 22 different things that we are going to be doing. I believe you, but I also know that we got this document and I was reading it and I was a little, to me, it was a little incomplete. Right. And I don't know how severe it is until today.

And maybe I'm out the loop. Maybe I don't hang around, you know, Stacy enough. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried And I have no idea and it a bit of you know it catching me off guard So all I saying is what the incentive if we sign tonight Why would you rush to get it done outside of your commitment the commitment I need to, well, I want to make sure it gets done, and we need to add a lot of things in there. There's nothing wrong with waiting a couple of days to get everything we need, you know, we talk about in this document So that when you come back and make one, when you vote next time, we're ready to roll.

I feel everyone feels comfortable. I think parents will feel comfortable, if that makes sense. And at the last board meeting during my superintendent's comment, I talked about the fact that we're having the community engagement forums. We have a lack of trust with our community, you know, and we need to build on that.

She did. And so I will make sure that we continue to build that trust because that's what it boils down to, right? Community trusting us that we're going to do what we're saying we're going to do. So, I want to keep, I want to give Stacy and Chris a turn.

I know, and then we're going to, I want everybody to be heard and then we'll circle back and, okay. Thank you. First of all, I just want to say to the parents that are here or watching, whatever, I empathize with you. I truly do.

I do not like to, as a board member, talk about my own children here, but I have three kids, two on a 504 and one with an IEP. And I also taught in a partner district for several years. So personally and professionally, like I hear you, I feel your pain and frustration. I appreciate all the work on both sides here that we're doing to hear our parents and their needs and support them.

I really do. And I thought, like Kim said, I actually made a note, like, this is the start of great work, that we should be a model for all the other partner districts when we finish this. We truly should. We like to be leaders and always here in Clayton and this is a really great area that we really could make a change throughout the entire region, truly.

When I saw the statistic earlier that 11.4%, I think you said, of our students are serviced by SSD, that struck me because that is large and larger than most other subgroups we look at when we look at data and things. And I would argue that the number's really even larger because we have kids that don't qualify for one reason or another or don't even know they should, parents don't even know they should be trying to qualify them for services. So I do think this work is important for all of our students, even beyond those 11.4%, which is why one of the questions I had, which you addressed, and I'm glad, is I think the PD piece is so important for all staff because it will make all of our students, all of our teachers better to serve all of our students, truly. And so I would, I mean, I don't know, I know, I don't know if the PD you're talking about is, are things that would be optional or whatever, but I actually think it's important enough to be like mandatory sessions in August or whenever, or throughout the year, whatever.

But I don't know if you could talk a little bit about that professional development you have in mind around this work. Yeah, so we're approaching it from a couple different sides. So one component is the work that Dr. Poole does with the various cohorts of teachers focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And based on their years in the district, every group has kind of their own learning pathway. And so one of the pathways this year is going to be focused on the needs of students with disabilities. And so Melissa, Kate, and I will be working with Dr. Poole in order to plan that particular professional learning.

Also, as part of student services, having the connections to the social workers and the counselors, finding opportunities throughout the year to get them connected with things like charting the life course, which we hosted for our families and for multiple districts last week, as well as looking at some of the professional development days that we have coming up later in the school year and figuring out where some of these pieces plug in in the best way, as well as looking at our summer institute offerings. So in that respect, some of it absolutely would be assured learning for particular groups of students, and others would be an opt-in. Obviously, we have kind of developed our list of the types of trainings that we would want to prioritize in the coming year. And so I'll be working with Dr.

Poole and Dr. Garganigo to figure out where those pieces best fit. Okay, good. I appreciate that, because I think, like what our parents said earlier, you know, you don't learn in college.

You know, so much of this you're not taught. And even if you were, for some of our teachers, that was 20 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever And I sure there are current best practices that we all need to be updated on as about you know how best to be handling like the social needs of these students especially and other things as well Okay, a lot of my questions were actually already asked by everybody else, so I think we've had a good amount. I would say as far as the agreement itself goes, I appreciate the action steps. I agree, I think we need some baseline data, although Dr.

Patel said it's in the appendix maybe or something. Is that what she was referring to? No. Or what was she referring to was in the appendix?

What were you saying, Dr. Patel, was in the? The action steps. The action steps.

Yeah. But not the data around it. Okay, so I appreciate hearing that this agreement is not necessarily set in stone that can't be changed. If knowing that, I would feel okay approving it.

If you feel there is data we should be including and can include before our next meeting in October, I'd prefer to wait until October to make sure it's in there. I do, though, I don't look at this agreement as limiting our work. I do think and hope and have confidence in all of you that in a few months or in January or in March, we see that these action steps aren't working or they aren't producing the results we want, That we as a Clayton School District can take action to change that and improve that. So knowing that it is maybe changeable or an evergreen document, you know, I feel better approving it whenever we approve it.

I just want to make sure that that option is open. And I would say that I attended the second forum a month ago. For me, the biggest takeaway was just the parent input in all of our work. Thank you.

I mean, all parents know their kids best, but I think in this case, it's even more crucial that we involve parents in, you know, all of these structures we're putting in place to just make sure those kids are successful. So I appreciate your openness to involving them. I hope we continue to do that in all ways. And that's it.

Thank you. These guys had great questions and took most of mine. So anyway, thank you for your work. I appreciate it.

And I would say one more thing about the agreement itself. It is, I think you said, a template, right, that all the partners districts use. So it's probably the same one that we approved a year ago. It was updated last year and it was the same one.

And now we've included action steps is the big difference that worked. But it's clear that you guys, and it makes sense, too, that, you know, everything that we're bringing in, bringing that data, absolutely. If that, you know, getting that information to you for the next one, that absolutely, because as board members, you need to make sure that you are looking at that information and the data before you're approving it. And to be able to include that in here, absolutely.

So before we, you know, if we just hold on it and then do it for the next one, but get that information in there. And I do agree that this is highlighting how we can absolutely partner, and we're only thinking about Clayton right now, but this will help in informing and better informing our other 21 districts. So that building this template, including the data pieces of it, and it's not that there's not a lack of trust, But it's like we just need to make sure that people are clear about what the expectations are and how we're doing and where we are. And I think I would add to my other big takeaway from the forum was the lack of communication.

And so I appreciate the attention you're giving that. And I think it's important that we focus on not just bettering communication individually with families with how their student is progressing and doing throughout the year, But just as a district to the community, I'm looking at Luke because I'm thinking of like our website, like we publish data for all kinds of things. We should be putting this out there also to hold so that the community is aware of what we're doing and also just to share what we're doing well. Just I think part of it is, you know, some of these things maybe we've already been doing and nobody knew it.

And I think we need to do a better job of just letting everyone know the work. I did want to just quickly also one more thing, comment on what Amy was saying about, like, staffing, for instance. I think part of the communication That might be necessary is it's hard for everyone to understand where Clayton ends and special begins or vice versa as far as hiring staff or training staff or whatever as an example. And so I want to make sure we're clear on like what is our responsibility as a Clayton school board and a Clayton school district in this agreement and in this role.

Like what are, you know, I just think maybe that needs to be clarified. It is hard to have a dual, what do you call it? I don't know. The partnership.

It's hard to kind of know who's, our staff works for you, yet they're working with our students. So clarifying that, I think, would help everybody, too. Well, and it was interesting. Before coming tonight, I was meeting with two teachers.

One was in Rockwood, and one was from Kirkcord. And they described that dual system. But ultimately, when the teachers are showing up, they work for Clayton. They don't want to be known.

Yes, they're SSD, but they don't want to feel like others. They want to be a part of Clayton. They like working here. They love the children.

And the same thing goes with the students because sometimes the students are referred to as SSD. That's just another way to remove. And when we talk about DEIA and Dr. Macklin and the way we're trying to approach this with the special school district is who has access and who's automatically informed and who's not.

And how do we make sure that dual systems, these are teachers who are walking in and they're teaching and working with their students. These are paras who are supporting the students. And the students are coming in and they are here for Clayton. And so what I feel like what our parents are saying is just that's where we need to.

We need to be cohesive. We need to be together. And we need to make sure that parents who are the most vulnerable students in our system are supported and they're knowledgeable and they're included and that they're not forgotten. And that's really ultimately what I hear from our parents, what they're saying.

And it's like this is an acknowledgment that this is where we need to work together. And I really think that that's what the partnership agreement is about. I think it was like it originated 10, 15 years ago where it was like more like a partner, like what was SSD responsible for, but it's merged into, because our parents are saying it's a dual system, but it shouldn't, our kids shouldn't feel that way. Our kids shouldn't, our children should not feel that they're othered as an SSD and that they're not as important.

And how do we make sure we don't do that either? Because when we open this up, we want to make sure that we are a, that SSD doesn't get in the way of that either. There's an equal ownership on that part too. Thank you.

I also wanted to just add on to what Dr. Keenan said. You know, in my role, I feel like at the end of the day, they're all our students. And so I think all of these courageous conversations that we've been having effectively since January have really transformed my thinking about things that we do at the system level.

So I just wanted to share an example of how my leadership practices evolved over time as a result of the parent feedback that we've gotten. So you spoke a little bit earlier about communication. And so one of the things based on feedback I had gotten from parents was about communication within a single building, like not specific to any building, but just in general, communication that happens between special education staff and our administrators and our general education staff as it happens for things like field trips. So if there's a grade level field trip and the building sends out an email about said grade level field trip, if I'm a parent with a student with a disability and I get that email, I don't know what that means for my child's experience.

So at the system level, one of the changes we've made behind the scenes is that when folks are submitting field trip request forms for approval by their principal and also by me, is now there is a space where folks are asked and expected to list who are the special education staff and case managers that they have consulted with and notified about said field trip, regardless of its size, in order to ensure that we are thinking more inclusive in our planning. We're thinking more inclusive and strategic and intentional about the communication that needs to happen to all of our families across that building who are impacted by that particular student life experience. And that in itself has been a professional learning opportunity, not a formal one on the calendar, but I have had a number of conversations since school has started, and we have implemented that at the systems level. Again that behind the scenes but it again one of those systemic changes that is now shifting that conversation shifting the culture and shifting people mindsets of how we serve all the students in our buildings Another piece that I wanted to reiterate to the board is that you know these parent engagement forums have been very transformative for me and for the team in terms of thinking about our work differently how we can elevate and improve what we doing But I also think it's important to acknowledge that earlier Dr.

Patel showed some of the statistics that we have over 280 students who are currently receiving special education students, or services, excuse me. And we are not having 280 families at our community engagement forums. And I have, I know I'm committed to making sure that moving forward, that in between the formal events and in between the conversations that we have with our building principals, the emails we receive, that I am also actively reaching out to parents in the coming weeks and throughout this school year to make sure that I am reaching out to the voices who aren't at the table, who aren't at those forums because I think that their perspectives are also really important in shaping the quality of our action steps and the work that we do with our principals. Thank you.

I just want to clarify to the board, because I don't know if everybody knows this. So at the last agenda planning with Dr. Patel and Dr. Wiens, we talked about, and I don't know what these steps are, but we had a conversation that very likely the district was going to be taking certain action steps independently of SSD that might not necessarily be part of the agreement per se.

For example, that third party mediator, arbitrator that we've been talking about, I don't know that that would be part of the agreement with SSD. That would be something that we would just do. Right. So some of these things, I mean, that we're talking about, we can't legally put stuff in the agreement that the district is going to be doing independently outside above and beyond what our agreement with SSD, just so everybody understands that component when we're talking about what the final document is going to look like.

I don't want people to think, oh, they didn't put that arbitrator in there. They're not doing it. No, that doesn't mean that we're not doing it. It means that that's just not part of our formal agreement with them.

We've committed as a district to do it and pay for it out of our own resources, but SSD might not have necessarily agreed to it. So I just want to make sure that everybody is on the same page there. Can I just, for the comment, we do agree to that? Okay.

Okay. I didn't know. Okay. Absolutely.

The cost of that and all that good stuff, right? The cost of a mediator. Okay. Jason.

Yeah, I don't have much, really much to say. I think anyone's kind of already said a lot of what, and then I kind of like chimed in when you were talking, Stacy. I do appreciate the work that you're doing, but I also want to make sure that we do put a complete plan together and it's transparent and people can see it and understand it. And then there needs to be metrics and measurements along the way where we get some, we're not getting off into March because these are our kids we're talking about.

And every day counts, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. We lose money. The services stop tomorrow. So we good.

So then, all right, well, I think we should wait. Yeah. Kim said it best. I think we should wait, get all the information we can possibly get from you guys, all the data, so that we can kind of match it up, and then make an informed decision.

That's my point. Okay Well let hear what Chris has to say and then I like to hear from the rest of you If you guys all want to wait then Okay. This is tricky and hard in so many ways for all of us in this room, most especially for these parents. I, too, am a parent of kids with special needs.

I have a, I had a kid with an IEP, I have a kid currently with a 504, I have a kid that couldn't be served at this district and had to go to a different district because of her learning disability. I really feel your pain. And I'm sitting here today because, partly because I felt that pain. Okay, so I will start my statement by saying that.

The next thing I'm going to say to that is you guys are doing exactly what you need to do. We're We're here talking about this, and Nisha and Robin are so serious about this because of you. So this is the start of a big movement that's going to help our kids, period. It just is.

As a parent, it's hard to trust that in many ways. It's hard to know all the background things that are going on with our administrators. Spervantage, It has to happen. Parents are the ones on the ground that know.

And the fact that your voices weren't in this already is a, you know, shame on us. Really. Now we know. You know, now things will be different.

This agreement is going to be evergreen for this year. Next year it's going to be evergreen. This is clearly we've changed our perspective on this now, and we now are going to go forward in a much different way. And I love that.

I mean, we are growth mindset on everything. And now looking at this, we're like, well, why aren't we on this? Right? So that feels really good to me.

And I hope that feels good to the parents. The idea that we can get updates on this throughout this year, I think that's going to help a lot because here's the thing. As a parent, you're like, but just change it. My kid needs it tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, last week. It's frustrating. I was in your shoes. I felt very frustrated for a long time.

I did feel heard, and I hope that we are really doing a good job of that because I know that that's the first step. But it is frustrating because education and probably a lot of things in life go slowly. And it feels critical, and it is, because every month for these kids is a month of more learning that they're either getting or not getting. And I get that.

So I feel both sides of the difficulty and the time constraints. Because as a parent, you needed it yesterday. As an administration and as a district, it can't happen right away. It is so tough.

It is so, so tough. I think the one thing I can give you and to tell you that I have seen this administration make very fast changes in lots of areas. Thank you. We'll see some great changes possibly, but just think down the line of those students in the future will have an even better system in place because of your voices, because we will eventually have these longer term things in place.

So a couple things that I want to address. Just wanted to start out with that general statement. Okay, so the listening, the moderator, Kim, that idea, I believe, I can't speak for Paul exactly, but I believe, I was at both of the town halls, and so I heard the feedback from all the parents there. So in the first one it was the four listening sessions about the four different topics And I think Paul point again I going to say it from my point of view because I don want to speak for Paul but I think what the idea is if we just have either SSD staff or Clayton staffers being the listeners then there some bias there There just is.

And I think what the idea would be, I didn't take it as a moderator type of situation. I took it more as who can we have come in and listen and have expertise around this area that can listen unbiasedly. It can be, you know, someone there that, you know, comes from an objective point of view. So that's how I took that, and I can totally understand why parents wanted that.

It always helps to have a third-party objective point of view, and certainly when there are such needs and there are so many emotions around this, great, that could be a really great thing for us to do. So thank you for already saying that that's something that you guys would like to do. That's amazing. And again, frustrating because it can't happen tomorrow because we've got to find the right person to do it.

It's really... It would have been a different result today if you'd done that. So now we're learning and we're going forward. We have learned what we can learn up to this point.

We didn't, you know, you can only know what you... You can't know what you don't know. Although, you know, I can see why that's your point. I certainly can.

But we can't say we don't know it anymore. So here we go. You know, that's how I look at that. Okay, so let me see what else is on my list.

And to that point, Chris, I think it was important for the first two community engagement forums for us to be there. Exactly. Because we needed to listen to it. Thank you.

And for the board members who attended, for you to listen to it. And I think for me, it was important for us to be there at the first two to lead that work. That makes perfect sense. Okay, so I may have misrepresented what I was saying.

Of course you guys were supposed to. But moving forward. Yes, but moving forward. And we wouldn't have to have that every time, right?

Somewhat a third party. But yes, these first two were absolutely, the way it happened I think was exactly right. Now we know going forward what we need that's different from what already happened. So yeah, thank you for making that point.

Okay, a couple of other things. I do want to have us speak about, it doesn't have to be a giant conversation, but I want to address Michelle's question about have we as a district considered the idea of doing this without a partnership with SSD the way we do it at the Family Center? Have we considered it? If we have, why aren't we doing it?

I know that this is a big question, but just can you give us just a little bit so that our parents can understand just, you know, sort of the framework around how you've thought about that and whether or not you have and what that brings up for the district? Because I know there's a lot there. Yes, and I will share with you what my current understanding is, and I'm sure there are other administrators in this space who would probably need to add on. So based on my interpretation of the Missouri revised statutes, there is a clause in there that does allow the creation of overlay districts to deliver special education services if the voters in the component districts decide that through a referendum that is what they want to do.

And so that is, again, kind of what Dr. Patel mentioned earlier in 1957, St. Louis County voters through a referendum approved it. The way the current state law is written and based on my interpretation and consultation with our legal counsel is that there's not currently an opt-out provision for that.

That is about the extent of my knowledge at this point in time. If the board would like us to learn more, I'm happy to engage in that, but that's my current understanding. Yeah, the text letter used was special school district. Right.

And so it's not specific to Clayton. Right. Special school district supports the 22 districts. And I think that in terms of being outside a special school district prior to coming here, and I don't know how many people have had experiences outside, this is the only district in the nation that has 100% funding for special ed.

If you're outside in Fox, in St. Charles, O'Fallon, you are having to pay whatever you need, say $12 million for your special ed, that's not fully funded by the state nor the federal government. The federal government and the state will cover about, on a good day, 50%. That $12 million, you would have to take out of your general fund $6 million to pay for all of those services.

The other part of it, you're a smaller district. You can't afford to have a full-time OT, PT, all these, because you don't have enough students that actually have those services. You would have to extend out to a co-op. Yes.

You would have to pay out there. You would be missing out on that $6 million, that special school district case. That is why I came here. When I was proposed to interview down here, I had to, like, what is this district?

It is so unique. It does not exist. There's one district down in the Boothill that also has this provision. It's very small.

But we are the largest district in the state of Missouri. We provide 6,000 staff across the county. The ABA services are unmatched. If you go outside, you will never get ABA services for our students with autism.

You wouldn't have the unmatched services that we have with our social emotional learning, the other pieces that we can draw on with the expertise. So it's not just the staffing that you're tapping into, it's the other supports and experts that are coming in through your MTSS, through your, if you need additional supports for your registered behavior technicians. Those positions don't exist in other places because staffing and schools just cannot afford it. Right.

And so Special School District really is here to make sure we are supporting that. Now, going back to that model, you don't have to have that model without Special School District. Build that model here. Exactly.

If you want, it's the, it's, what I'm hearing is, it's the culture, it's the environment. If that's what it, we need to make sure that we're building that environment and figure out why is it that in the, Spervantage, And how do you make it better? And how do we do that? And to your point, Chris, that you were saying, you know, this is bringing this up so that we can do better.

And that a board is now more informed about what's lacking in this agreement. And we are informed in that, too, from a parent perspective. So that's where we can just get better. It's not perfect when you're in a single district with special ed because I've been a special ed director in a single district and I've been othered as a director of special ed and my staff was othered because when there's difficult times and there's difficult situations and they're saying that's a special ed kid or that's an ODLSS kid or that's an SSD kid.

So that quickly turns into that. And what this agreement is trying to say, how do we make sure we build this together? Our staff, like I said, come here to work for Clayton. So the only thing is we're the hiring agency for that.

Let's make sure we can build that, and what do we need to do with the professional development, with the culture, with the principals' interactions? The principals feel like they have the ability to say, I need you to do these things. We need to own that. Okay.

Thank you for giving that background on why the partnership with SSD is very valuable for us and for letting me know that there is no opt-out at this point. I hope that's helpful for Michelle. Okay. Next, I will say something that came about when I was at the – we've talked a lot about what came out.

Stacey, you did an awesome job of talking about the two forums. One of the things I also want to add that I really appreciated about what we're doing is that Cameron has become more involved in helping to advocate for these students and these families, these parents who are having difficulty. I wasn even aware but it makes perfect sense that Cameron with DEI inclusivity is really thinking about these pieces in ways that we haven previously as a district So I am so appreciative of the fact that Cameron even Oh, yay, good. Yay.

Yeah, I mean, all the parents there were like, oh, wonderful. This feels so good to know that we have an advocate, that we have a person who really is going to be able to take steps systematically Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Other forms other than this agreement, especially because I'll say that by October 12th, this agreement could look different. But again, it's still not going to capture all the things that we're going to do in terms of changes this year. It's just not because there's just not enough time.

But now that we're looking at, okay, well, maybe in the spring is when we should start talking or even earlier about next year's agreement. So we're looking at how to change the timeline, sort of like you were saying, Gary, so that we can make sure that all the voices that are needing to be heard are heard, and it isn't a rush to, oh, wait, we haven't, we got to plan it out better, I think. And so that's already been talked about, and I think that'll be really helpful. I think that's it.

I really appreciate all the work that you're doing. I know how important this is to you guys. It's very clear to me. So that makes me feel really confident and that we'll see some great changes.

So again, parents, keep up your good work too because we appreciate you so much and want to hear, continue to hear. That's it. Thank you. Gary, do you want to say something?

Can we go to the first page of this? So, yeah, I guess second page. I want to make sure I understand what this means, and I think it might illustrate where this document lives. So tell me if I'm wrong about this.

I mean, I think the intent of this chart, I don't know what the right term is, is to show kind of the levels of legal and regulatory and contractual things that govern the way we deliver services. So it kind of goes from the broadest to the more narrow. This document is under the additional resources on the right, right? Partnerships area, that's what that is.

So that is one of the, on the innermost circle, it's one of the things on the innermost circle that is only between special school district and the component district. There's a lot of other things that apply to everybody from the federal, state, statute and stuff. So this is one of the things that drills down into how we do this There are a lot of other things there not listed I think and tell me if I wrong about this not listed as additional resources but I think what would be included are the other things that we the other actual agreements that we enter into and that we approve the things for the ECSE services substitute services things like that that would also be kind of detailed in that innermost circle Yeah, that would be at the top part of that. That square, so the early childhood and all that, that would be at the top part.

The additional resources is the, that is a creation of being a part of the partner districts, our SSD. But so what, so things like the agreement between districts for the ZCSE services and substitute services and stuff like that, is that more parallel to this, or is that? Those are actually, when you look at, those are actually the legal documents that have to be approved in terms of to go forward. Which, as opposed to this, which is exactly what I was getting to.

Yes. And I was trying to get to that point. Because there's a couple of them on the doc and the consent agenda. Yes, which we have on our consent agenda tonight.

Those are more the type of agreements that those of us who look at agreements all the time are used to seeing, as opposed to this document, which just as a point going forward, I probably wouldn't even call this an agreement if that was a better way to talk about it. And it might make us a little more comfortable with approving and not approving or coming back or whatever. I mean, so that's just an observation. All of that said, I think that our, going back to my question about the timeline, and I know I'm getting way more time than I usually want anyone to take, But I think our parents would be more comfortable if we paused our timeline because of the way this was presented to them.

And I think out of respect for them, if nothing else, this can also still be approved. We should do that. So that's my view on that. So thank you for helping me and all of us, I think, understand that.

I think we need to remember that when we're talking about this. Okay. Okay, so I think that I just want to kind of bring this full circle that I don't, you know, I personally, I don't have a problem with not voting tonight. I do want to remind the board that, you know, our responsibility of the board is to keep this high level.

And I think we can all agree that, you know, our vision is that our kids that receive SSD services, that they're getting stellar, stellar education. And so that's, you know, what we're, that's our, that's what we're telling Dr. Patel and Dr. Weins and Dr.

Poole and SSD and that's what our high level vision is. I think we need to be careful not to micromanage that and to let them do their thing and give them time and space to do it. And I, you know, I can assure you that, well, I know this board knows that. The parents probably don't know it as much as I know it, that when the three of them say they're going to do something, they do it, and they do it good.

And I've never seen them fail. So I have full faith in them that they are going to do this and do this right. And I think we need to give them space and space to do it and to let them execute on their plan. But we can, if you guys want to wait to vote, let's wait until the 12th.

Gary, you want to wait? I mean, that's my preference. Okay. Tim, you're good?

We would all make a motion. So, would we, I mean, I think the motion that we would actually make is, well, we actually don't have a motion on here. No, because it was embedded in the motion. We don't actually need to amend it.

I don't mind waiting two weeks, right? It doesn't upset the Apple part too much. Like, it's whatever. That's fine.

It's not really clear to me what we're expecting to have happen. Right. I agree. And I don't know that it's necessarily.

I mean, Kim, you asked for something. I don't know. Like, again, like, let's keep this high level. We've told them what our expectations are, and I think that we need to give them a chance to follow through and to do it.

If there's something that you need to see or something you want incorporated into the agreement, I get it. Well if someone could reconcile what we asking for Yeah yeah Reconcile it so that we have deliverables so that when we come back this is not a performative stall Right exactly I not performing this stall I'm just saying we want to make sure that we're... What do you all want to see? Yeah, come back with some...

I wanted to see a couple provisions added to the agreement. We talked about that. Everyone's writing this down? You guys got this?

Do you all feel like you have some idea of what to come back I think is what we're asking. Kim, you wanted data on baseline data. I mean, listen, if we approve through the consent agenda tonight the legally required things in order for services to continue for students and for the funding to occur for the services, however good or poor they may be received by now, to continue to happen. So to me, that's a separate thing.

Okay? But as a board, if we're going to review this partnership agreement every year, and today's the first year that we're actively looking into this based on the concerns that parents have raised over the course of the last six months, then we ought to approve the best agreement that we can from the start. And so waiting a couple weeks to have some of that baseline data inserted so we know where it is we're starting from. And if it doesn't exist, you can put, it doesn't exist, but we're going to get it by the start of next year.

There are, I didn't count the number of sub-bullets in the as evidence by, but there's probably 60 of them in there. Do you have 10? Do you have five? Show us what you have.

And I think we're all committed together, and the parents obviously are the most committed to working together to find the missing data that doesn't exist and improve the data where we need to see improvement. But without that... I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Are you asking for...

Typically in a contract, you wouldn't see data. It's not a contract. This is... It is a contract, ultimately.

No. Yeah. It's an agreement. It's an agreement between SSD that...

It's an agreement that sets forth the expectations. That's not a contract. Between the two parties. So, I mean, there are...

I went to law school. There's all different kinds of agreements. There are MOUs. It is an agreement.

There are letters of intent. There are partnerships agreements, which are binding and non-binding. Are you asking for the data to be attached as an exhibit to the agreement? I'm asking for...

There's already information in here. There's not a need to create a separate exhibit. I don't understand what she's asking. And then do you want it in there that, okay, that the two school districts agree?

I just want to make sure they understand what their charging orders are, that they're agreeing that the baseline data is going to improve by X amount each year? No, I'm not even asking for that. I'm asking for what do we have, what do we not have. Where we have something, show us what it is.

Kim is asking the measurement currently, right, and where we're going with this new data, with this new information. But the measurement of... It sounds like they need time to figure out where it's going to go, but I need to know where it starts. That's all I'm asking for.

Go ahead, you go. I'm done. Okay, so are we going to vote on this then? We're going to wait to get that data.

We're going to make a few more edits to the agreement, and then we're going to vote on it on October the 11th. Since this is an action item, I just need a motion to postpone the vote on this item to our floor line. We don't actually have a posted motion. I mean, it was...

No, it's not even. It's embedded in the presentation. I asked that earlier, too. Well, 801, I mean, it's recommended that the School District of Clayton approve the SSD partnership, but no one has made that motion.

I don't think, respectfully, I don't think we need to amend anything because we did have the presentation. I agree with Gary. Just blame me if it's wrong. A lot of legal stuff going on tonight.

It's really not what anybody wants to see. Before we walk away from this, just do we know our deliverables or not? I think we do. Robin, can you reconcile that, what we have here, what we're asking for?

Yes, my takeaways are two things. One, that we need to work directly with Amy to get some of the language around some of the provisions. Or legal, yes. Of what could be added to the partnership agreement.

And the second thing to Kim's point was any baseline data that we have for any of the indicators that we included in the partnership agreement to add those in in some way, shape, or form so the board knows where we're starting from. Yes. And maybe if we can get that baseline data in our, do you think we could have it in our Friday, in one of the Friday memos? Yeah, I'll email it.

Before, so we all have a chance to look at it before the meeting. And by the next meeting, is this doable to get that stuff into the document? Yes. All right, we'll make sure if we needed more time, we can carve out some more time.

Well, and then as part of the improved communication with parents, should that not also be shared? With parents at the same time so that they have an opportunity to comment on it before the 12th or the 11th of October. Not change their traffic plans. Yeah.

They'll be on board decks, won't they? Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Okay. What about the legal stuff we talked about, amendments and all that stuff, meeting with the mayor? Is that in there? She said.

Oh, you said that? All right. Cool. You said it.

All right. Do you guys want to talk some more? I have five or six more questions. Go right ahead, Jason.

Have at it. Can we argue about whether it's a contract a little bit longer? Yeah, we can go back there. That's super interesting.

Sorry, we're getting a little punchy now. Okay, so let's wrap this up. Okay, so we thank you to everybody for being here. And let's, I think we're going to.

And Dr. Keenan has other staff here too. Thank you all for being here. Yes.

Chiquita Moore is the Chief Officer for the Partner Districts, so she's directly supporting and works directly with Robin. And then Dr. Michael Macklin, he is our Executive Director of DEIA, and he works very closely with Dr. Poole.

Thank you guys for being here. We appreciate it. Okay. And I just want to make a comment.

I thank you for all the thoughtfulness. I appreciate the parents and their comments too. And I agree, it was valuable to be at those first two meetings to really hear from our parents and then being able to bring in a moderator to kind of facilitate it. But it was very valuable to hear it firsthand and understanding it too.

So that's important. And we will bring this information back to you. We've got our notes and we'll be back here on October 11th. Well, it'll be just as long, too.

I just live across the park, so I'm good. All right, thank you, ladies. Okay, Jason, where'd he go? Okay, so I think we're going to just take a few minutes.

Just like three minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you.

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

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

Thank you Thank you. Okay, 9.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the 2023 property tax rates as follows. Supererntantial, Bord of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I move that the Board of Education approve the insurance providers, the plan designs, benefit summaries, premium rates, and district contributions for 2024 as presented and authorized I would like to ask the district administration to execute contracts to facilitate these employee benefits.

Second. Questions or comments? Yeah. John, how often do we review employee benefits?

Is it annually? Yes. Okay. And are these increases that we're seeing, I mean, I know that there's increases kind of across the benefits specter everywhere, but how do these increases compare to a year ago?

A year ago in the health coverage, we had no increase. So this 6% increase has really spread over two years. It looks pretty good. Okay.

We had no increase in dental coverage a year ago. This year it's 15%. Spread over two years, that still doesn't look too bad. This is actually the two prior years on dental coverage that did not have an increase.

No other coverage is increasing this year. Okay. It's just, yeah, the only one that stuck out to me was the family premium subsidy, which more than doubled. Yes.

And that's kind of a structural change. Our premium rates before now did not totally reflect risk. Oh. So I'm trying to trend premium rates to risk.

And as I do that, to minimize the impact on staff, I'm putting that money into that subsidy versus putting it all into the employee rate. And you think that on an aggregate basis that minimizes the overall district liability and employee liability as a whole? And cost. Okay.

Okay. I'm good. Because if I put it into the employee rate, it comes with additional cost because it's subject to pension contributions. Yeah, and then it makes it harder for us when we go to negotiate with employees of the following year, too.

So I get the movement. I just wanted to make sure that at a net aggregate that we're not disadvantaged, and it sounds like the answer is not. As it is, we're not, and in fact, it's better for us overall. Cost-wise, it's much more efficient.

Okay. Fun. Benefits. That's it.

I move that the Board of Education approve the fiscal year 2024 CRSWC budget as submitted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments?

Okay all in favor Aye Aye Any opposed Okay It passes And with that I just I do want to say we continue to have like meetings so we can continue to monitor that and not wait until really late So I have a meeting set up soon Okay. No, I have a quick comment. Is that everything you needed to last night? Let's see, 9.04.

I move that the Board of Education approve policies IGAB, IGC, IKE, IL, and IND as presented. It's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? Okay, all in favor?

Aye. Good. Motion passes. Consent agenda.

10.01, I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 10.02 through 10.14. Okay. Somebody second? Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Not that it's needed, but... Seconded. Are there any questions?

I just would point out that some of these things that we've been talking about in terms of actually implementing the agreements with, All in favor? Aye. Okay. Board communications.

Questions? Let's see. What do we have? Parks and Rec.

We had a great Parks and Rec meeting three and a half weeks ago. And you can't remember. Lots of really good updates that I don't remember. I remember them, nothing that is significant to share or update the board on.

Okay. Clayton Education Foundation. I missed that one. Were you there?

I was there. Two years in a row. Two years in a row. How'd it go?

Clayton Education Foundation had a good meeting a couple weeks ago. We revamped the mission statement, or they revamped the mission statement. So that was, I think, a good step forward in terms of thinking about their own strategic direction. I will say there does seem to be a good group of people, sort of a nucleus that's developing of people who, you know, want to push the organization forward and do some good things for our kids.

So that's good to see. It's not going to pop up, but it is worth mentioning that for the center, one of the commissioners, in case anyone knows, Alex Bornstein, passed away last Friday. It's worth mentioning. He was sick for most of the year.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. One of the members is kind of a local celebrity this month in Ben's Shakespeare play. I went to see it. Yeah, we did too.

Oh, you did too? Yeah. Wasn't it great? Yeah, I thought it was really good.

The Shakespeare in the Park, or Shakespeare in the Streets presentation at the City Soccer Stadium. Yeah. Ben Hockman, who's an alum and CEO. And he talked in one interview I saw about writing a play in high school here, so it's cool to see that highlighted.

Yeah. Chris, social-emotional wellness. Yeah, we had our first meeting. It was great.

What I'm excited about with our social-emotional learning and wellness committee, the fact that we have both of those in the title is extremely important, so I want to point that out, and I appreciate that, is that now we had our wellness coordinator as part of this meeting. And so, again, I feel like things are really working together well in terms of, you know, we've had this committee for many years, but when we had this committee prior to this, we didn't have a wellness coordinator. So now all of this is just going to be working together. Even better, we'll be getting more things done for our students, serving our students in more ways.

So it's going to be great. Jessica was fantastic and has so many amazing ideas for, she's just off on a really good start, To assure you, our wellness coordinator, Jessica, Jennifer, Jessica is, you know, nobody, but Jennifer is the wellness coordinator, and she is doing an amazing job. I'm sorry, Jennifer, if you're listening. Jessica's the consultant, that's why.

That's why, thank you. Jessica's the consultant. I knew there was a Jessica. Anyway, they're working together really closely, Jessica and Jennifer, and Jessica's amazing, and Jennifer's learning everything, and it's, I'm feeling really great about it.

You want me to do my other committee right now too or wait? Do it. SSD. Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Okay. So I am on the SSD governing board. We just had a meeting on Monday. It was our first meeting.

I just want to say that SSD, you know, they are an incredible organization. They have a lot of, they do a lot of good work around the state. There a lot of bureaucracy that goes along with what they do which makes everything they do harder but I feel good about our relationship with SSD I feel like SSD is doing a good job of making changes and having really honest conversations about all the way down to the level of you know parents concerns and challenges So it's not just our district that is getting to hear, you know, about these concerns and having these concerns. You know, SSD is being as responsive as they can be.

And, you know, the governing council does a really good job of helping make sure that the SSD board itself is functioning, you know, the way it should and making sure students' needs are being met. So that's all I can say. There's more meetings to be had, obviously, but I can – I feel the things are going smoothly in terms – what am I trying to say? I can assure you that the SSD is doing a good job of trying to better itself.

Thank you So Cameron and I are going to get together Right Cameron Yeah yeah I just wanted to add that Nisha and I attended a meeting of the St Louis the organizing committee I guess you would call us of the St Louis School Boards PLC which I think you put in the weekend update And those legislative advocacy meetings that we used to have once a month when we were in session, we have kind of transformed into including the whole region. St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County, and the city, right?

All districts there are invited. Nisha offered Clayton's services with the help of Luke to kind of, first of all, create a website for the St. Louis School Boards PLC where you can go view past meeting information and other information. And you all got calendar invites to the monthly, what has now taken over that, the monthly Zoom meetings on legislative advocacy.

So they're in your calendars Friday mornings at, you know, 8 a.m. If you can attend, it'd be great. And we also started brainstorming about the next in event which is Saturday December 2nd from 9 to noon I know some of you have been to those before I always leave them feeling very motivated and energized to collaborate with other districts and you know do some great work And we felt like, especially around legislation, especially now, it's really important that we collaborate together because there's strength in numbers. And so many of us were kind of duplicating the exact same things or lack thereof, really.

And a lot of districts have been doing some really great work around it, so we're hoping to kind of broaden that to the region. So hopefully you can attend the Zoom meetings when you can or the in-person event. Joe Miller is still kind of heading that all up, and he's doing a great job through U-City. The next event in December is going to be in Ferguson-Florissant School District at their STEAM Academy.

Awesome. Thank you for that update. Okay, so I think we can adjourn. So...

Move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second. All right, all in favor, aye. So I didn't sign these, I guess.

No.

Tax Rate Hearing/Board of Education Business Meeting School District of Clayton September 27, 2023 Meeting Minutes

Members Present:

Ms. Amy Rubin – President Ms. Stacy Siwak –Vice President Mr. Gary Pierson –Secretary Ms. Kim Hurst – Treasurer Mr. Jason Wilson – Director Mr. Jason Growe – Director Ms. Chris Win – Director

Non-Voting Attendees: Dr. Nisha Patel – Superintendent Dr. Milena Garganigo – Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Dr. Tony Arnold – Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Dr. Robyn Wiens – Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Dr. Cameron Poole – Chief Officer of Equity, Inclusion & Accountability John Brazeal, Chief Financial Officer Luke Heitert – Chief Communications Officer/Safety & Security Liaison Jeff Puls – Director of Technology Mohini Mahajan – 23/24 Student Representative to the Board Heike Janis – Executive Assistant to Superintendent/Board of Education

1. Tax Rate Hearing – 7:00 p.m. Information: 1.01 Adequate Notice/Call to Order - Tax Rate Hearing The meeting was called to order at 7:02 p.m.

Information: 1.02 2023 Property Tax Rate Hearing Chief Financial Officer, John Brazeal, facilitated the tax rate hearing and provided information to board members and the community regarding the process of the tax rate setting.

Information: 1.03 Public Comments - 2023 Tax Rate Public Comments for the Tax Rate Hearing: There were no public comments for the tax rate hearing.

2. Adjournment of Tax Rate Hearing Action, Procedural: 2.01 Adjourn Tax Rate Hearing The meeting adjourned at 7:06 p.m.

3. Statement of Adequate Notice Information, Procedural: 3.01 Call to Order The meeting was called to order at 7:07 p.m. and the Pledge of Allegiance was recited.

Action: 3.02 Approval of Agenda To adopt the agenda as posted.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Amy Rubin. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

Board of Education Meeting September 27, 2023 Page 2

4. Recognizing Our Own Information: 4.01 Honeycomb STL The Board of Education recognized Sari Gross for bringing a new organization for Jewish teens to St. Louis called Honeycomb STL.

Information: 4.02 High School Student Published Author The Board of Education recognized Grace Wolf, a current Senior at Clayton High School, who published her first children's book.

5. Public Comment Information: 5.01 Public Participation at Board Meetings Michelle Abounader: Addressed the board with concerns regarding the need for change in the district and SSD to support the students.

Paul Crowe: Addressed the board of education regarding the concerns about administration at Special School District and School District of Clayton.

6. Superintendent Communications Information: 6.01 Superintendent Communications Dr. Nisha Patel, Superintendent, shared an update of the district with the board members.

7. Student Representative to the Board Information: 7.01 Student Representative to the Board of Education - Update Student Representative, Mohini Mahajan, provided an update to the board regarding information she received through the School Board Student Advisory group (SBSA) meeting with students.

8. Presentations Action: 8.01 SSD Partnership No motion was made to approve the partnership agreement. After discussion and input from parents, this agenda item will be added to the October 11, 2023 business meeting and the vote will be postponed until then.

9. Action Items Action: 9.01 2023 Property Tax Rate Approve 2023 property tax rates as follows: $3.8772 per $100 assessed valuation for residential real estate. $4.6025 per $100 assessed valuation for commercial real estate. $4.4447 per $100 assessed valuation for personal property.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Amy Rubin. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

Action: 9.02 2024 Renewal of Employee Benefit Plans Approve the insurance providers, the plan designs/benefit summaries, premium rates and District contributions for 2024 as presented; and authorize District administration to execute contracts to facilitate these employee benefits.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Stacy Siwak. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

Board of Education Meeting September 27, 2023 Page 3

Action: 9.03 Approval of CRSWC Budget for 2023-2024 That the Board of Education approve the Fiscal Year 2024 CRSWC budget as submitted.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Stacy Siwak. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

Action, First Reading: 9.04 2nd Reading - Policy Update That the Board of Education approve policies IGAB, IGC, IKE, IL and IND as presented.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Jason Wilson. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

10. Consent Agenda Action (Consent): 10.01 Motion to Approve Consent Agenda Items That the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 10.02 through 10.14

10.02 Adoption of the Local Compliance Plan for the Division of Special Education (ECSE) 10.03 Agreement for Providing Music Therapy Services to Students 10.04 Agreement with Special School District for Provision of ECSE Services for 2023-2024 10.05 Agreement with Special School District for Homebound General Education Services 10.06 Adoption of the Local Compliance Plan for the SSD Partner Districts (K-12) 10.07 Agreement with Special School District of St. Louis County for Substitute Teacher Service 10.08 Early Resignation Notification Incentive Plan 10.09 MOU - Missouri Baptist University Field Experience and Student Teaching Agreement 10.10 2023-2024 Substitute Nurse Pay Increase 10.11 August 2023 Financial Reporting 10.12 August 2023 Disbursement Report 10.13 Personnel 10.14 Approval of Minutes

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Amy Rubin. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

11. Board Communications Information: 11.01 Board Calendar, Committee, Community and Liaison Reports Gary Pierson - Mr. Pierson attended the Parks and Rec meeting and provided a brief update. Jason Growe - Mr. Growe attended the Clayton Education Foundation (CEF) meeting and shared information with the board members. Chris Win - Ms. Win attended the Social/Emotional and Wellness Committee meeting as well as the Special School District Governing Council meeting and provided an update to the board members. Stacy Siwak - Ms. Siwak attended a planning session with the STL School Boards Professional Learning Communities and shared information with the board members.

Board of Education Meeting September 27, 2023 Page 4

12. Adjournment Action, Procedural: 12.01 Adjournment The meeting adjourned at 9:42 p.m.

That the Board of Education adjourn.

Motion by Gary Pierson, second by Jason Wilson. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Amy Rubin, Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Gary Pierson, Jason Wilson, Chris Win, Jason Growe

_________________________________________

___________________________________________ Amy Rubin, Board President

Gary Pierson, Board Secretary

Date: September 27, 2023