September 4, 2024

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

I would like to call our business meeting to order. We need to say the pledge again. Okay, okay. Didn't think so.

Chris, will you please read the motion to adopt the agenda? I move that we adopt the agenda as posted. Second. All those in favor?

Aye. Okay. Motion passes. Agenda is adopted.

Okay, before we get to public comment, I would just like to make a couple comments on behalf of the school board. We lost a student this week to cancer, Tate Kest, and It's hard to find words, but on behalf of the school board, I just would like to extend our heartfelt sympathies and condolences to Tate, his family, his friends, and our entire school community that's had a rough week. And we are all thinking of Tate and his family at this time. In addition, I think everybody's probably aware of a school shooting in Georgia today.

And again, our hearts are heavy as a school community thinking of another school community dealing with such a tragedy. And I know that as a district, as a school board, as individuals, that we are all holding close to our hearts and in our thoughts everyone affected by this tragic situation today. um six years ago i think it was six years ago the school board here which only included some of us adopted a resolution which i'm not going to read to you but basically it was to declare our support for sensible gun safety legislation and i just wanted to remind the board those of you who weren't on it then and the community that we still stand by that and today is a prime example why. And again, our thoughts, our prayers, our condolences and sympathies go to Tate and his family as well as everyone affected by the tragedy today in Georgia at the school there too.

That being said, Luke, do we have any public comment tonight? No, okay. Then... Okay, I will turn it over to Dr.

Patel. Great, thank you and welcome everyone. First two weeks of school have gone really, really well, very smooth. I would say a lot of staff members and parents and students have said they felt like we didn't even have a summer break in a good way.

Routines were set, everybody just got into the groove of things, so really good two weeks. I just wanna have a couple of things this evening. The first thing is I do wanna officially congratulate Ms. Sarah G.H., who is our PE and health teacher at the high school, she just won Health Teacher of the Year Award for the State of Missouri from Missouri Society of Health and Physical Education.

Sarah has been with us for 13 years, close to 13 years in our district. She started at YDOWN. now is at the high school, and she's almost 18 years in teaching. But she's absolutely passionate about the work she does, and the kids love her, and she's very involved with professional learning and really passionate about everything.

So huge congratulations to Sarah. Later on this evening, Paragon is here. She's going to give us an update about the Long Range Facilities Master Plan. And you can just see here high-level meetings that are set up for every month.

Today they started, we already had our district steering committee meeting, I believe it was last week. Today they started their subcommittees at each of the buildings, and they met with Merrimack, Captain, and the high school. And then tomorrow they have Glenridge Family Center at Y-Down. And then, as you can see, in October, November, December, January, we're going to continue with all the different meetings.

A lot of engagement opportunities for anyone that wants to know more. They're more than welcome to attend any of the building-level community forums or even our two district-wide community forums that we're going to have. We also thank you, Paragon, for being very accommodating and adjusting to our crazy schedules and our asks. But they also added three additional meetings based on input from our last steering committee meeting.

So on the 17th, they're going to have a special meeting with our coordinators council, which is basically all of our coordinators for programming, like academic needs and what kind of facilities we would need for that. They also added a special meeting for our athletics and activities. So having the middle school and the high school get together and really look at all of our facilities specifically for the center, like the gymnasiums, the pool, tennis courts, and what we are envisioning for the next few years. So it is, right Frank?

Thumbs up for that. So I really appreciate that and I know that we're gonna get into that a little bit later. Quick reminder for the community, if you have not, we sent out a specific link directly just to our parents, students and staff. So if you have not filled out the cell phone survey, we send out a reminder.

It does close tomorrow, tomorrow, right? Yep, tomorrow around midnight. And then we will be doing a formal presentation on October 9th to the board based on all the feedback that we have gotten and giving a formal recommendation for the for the cell phone usage in our schools. And then finally athletics, I did want to give a shout out.

Steve Hudson presented this information at freshman night, I believe. I just thought it was really eye opening. So if you look at this, for over 80 years we had two state championships. And since 2023, when we changed our shift and focus on, we always say we wanna be excellent in everything we do, especially academics.

Our philosophy is we should also be excellent in athletics and activities. And so if you look at this data set, I think that's pretty impressive from 2023 on and the number of state championships we have had. Our students are doing amazing academics and athletics. This season already, we won our first home game, football.

Soccer has been on fire. They have not given up even one goal so far, and I think it was three tournament wins. That's impressive. Volleyball, I believe, finished second in the tournament, and field hockey won in their pool.

We've just got started. So looking for a great season for that as well. And then now I'm going to hand it off to you, Sia, because I know you've got quite a bit of information today to share. I do.

OK, well, first of all, before I get into the student update aspect, I wanted to say that I was one of Ms. GH's students. And it is so wonderful that such an amazing, all the teachers are amazing, but that she especially got such a great recognition because truly amazing coming from a student. Okay, so I'd like to start off strong sharing with you all the student update about the attendance policy.

So after speaking with many classmates and friends, the main idea or main thing that I would like to share with you is that students have a lot of questions and what if situations that come with the attendance policy. Instead of really being opposed to the policy, it's more questions about their specific circumstances and a little more of like a worry aspect of the situations that may happen. So when I began to look more into the details about the policy, I learned that there was an appeal process. And personally, that made me a lot more comfortable with the idea.

And I believe that one of the possible solutions for the concerns with the policy would be to share more information about the little details and increase awareness to the students about the cell phone policy. For example, sharing about the appealing process that could take place if you were sick for a long period of time, excusing you from saying having to take a detention because of health issues. Another concern, mainly from the upperclassmen, were college visits atop of those eight days. Because if you take an excused absence to visit a university, it would still count to one of your eight days that you have.

So after speaking with Dr. Patel, she gave me the wonderful idea of giving juniors and seniors two college visit days atop of the eight days so that if you were to get sick and have additional excused absences, you wouldn't have to sacrifice your college visits to, let's say, not reach the maximum of eight days before consequence. One of the last suggestions about the policy I wanted to give is regarding the makeup process for passing the eight days. Instead of serving an attention which would erase an absence, the idea would be to check into the attendance room and then go to the teacher that you have a no credit assigned to and then speaking with that teacher coming up with a plan of action to let's say make up the work you've done or to ask a question about a unit that you could particularly be struggling with because of missed class and yeah, that's what I wanted to share about the attendance policy and The main biggest thing, of course, cell phones.

So, okay. Where to begin? But, okay. Thank you.

So I've spoken with a large group of students and the School Student Advisory Council, SBSA, and so I would hope to bring the overall grand perspective and voice about this, current and the future cell phone policy, because I know there are lots of individual perspectives. But I'm here to bring the overall big one. So one key thing that I would like to begin by stating is that the students are not against the research and the data that show that cell phones are a distraction during class and during study time. But we do feel that there is another side of the problem, with hopes that there's a better solution than simply locking the phones away for the whole school day.

One of the main concerns about the potential cell phone ban is what cell phones would look like together with the open campus policy. I know one student specifically was talking about going outside and maybe getting in a car crash in the highway, and then not having your cell phone to be able to report an incident or simply communicate to your parents, let's say, for, again, the specific circumstances. But that still are the things that would cause students' concerns. Yeah, you will find that the seniors are the main advocates for cell phones.

And one of the reasons that we push so hard is because we have such fond memories of our early high school years exactly as Clayton was before. And we simply wish that same amazing and great experience for all of our underclassmen. So to best find a solution that allows for sort of both sides of the issue to be heard, together we have created a list of possible outcomes with our perspectives on the possible outcome of the possible outcomes. So the first possible outcome that students have seen is to ban cell phones.

And the students would strongly advise against this solution due to the new cell phone policy already working so well to minimize the cell phone distraction. Implementing a stronger policy when our current one works so well leaves the students with concerns about the little moments in our days when cell phones were truly an asset. The second outcome is to maintain the cell phone policy as it is now. So no cell phones during instructional time, no earbuds, which already works great, and students feel very comfortable with this because they actually have very positive comments as to how it's already been improving in the year, and there have been little to no improvements.

incidents regarding distractions or disruptions during class time because of cell phones. So we really do believe that it has eliminated any type of risk or any type of concern that interfere. So the threat of a more harsh cell phone policy has made people conform to it? Yes, well maybe not exactly but truly I think that everyone is happy with how it's going now and since it's already working so well I think everyone's like No, let's not lock phones away.

So yes. And then our third one is to maintain the third possible outcome would be to maintain the cell phone policy as it is of now but adding maybe some additional resources. And this is one of the suggestions that the students wanted to add saying that it would benefit all students to implement resources maybe with the Wellness Center or to simply give a little speech about learning tips and tricks on how to minimize the distractions of cell phones at home as well, apart from school. For example, this might include apps that block distractions or methods that separate your study time from your free time, and then in your free time you can check a couple of messages.

And students would strongly encourage this solution because it maintains the current policy as it is, which is already effective, while adding an extra component that helps manage this distraction outside of school as well. So high school prepares us for the life ahead. And for good or for worse, our cell phones will be with us for the rest of our life. So we hope that by learning how to manage the distraction at a young age, hopefully implementing resources in school that student update will help us manage it we'll be better prepared to manage all types of distractions with electronics in the future.

So yeah that's my little update and I also wanted to say that I know that this student update has been mostly focused on the high school and I wanted to mention that the next SPSA especially to contact all of our elementary school students and our middle school students. I'm going to be attending sixth grade camp next in a couple of weeks, so I'll be able to really get in touch with the Y down kids there in sixth grade. So I'm very excited to bring you all an update with all of the younger kiddos as well. So thank you for all of your attention.

Great. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's not random.

You look at me like, a question? OK, good. Have you actually witnessed in any of your classes thus far a teacher asking for a phone to be put away and there being any consequence because the student did not comply? So being completely truthfully honest, on the first day of school there was one thing in my math class that a student took it out.

And I think it was more of a reflex, especially after coming out of summer so far, which just goes to show how cell phones are such a part of our life. the teacher was like, hey, I know it's the first day of school, but remember the cell phone policy. And then they were like, oh my goodness, you're so right. And then they took it away.

And then it hasn't been an issue at all. And I think part of that, like you did mention, is a little bit fear. But that's also not the worst thing because it really is keeping us from the distraction and letting us focus on studies. Yeah.

And I just wanted to say I appreciate you talking with the other students and helping us see that the students do really understand the data and the research and that they aren't refuting that. And I just appreciate the fact that, you know... you made sure that that was the case. Because, you know, I think as an adult, we're not sure how much the students are, you know, really reading these studies the way we do.

You have access to them, et cetera, et cetera, so that was reassuring to me. So thank you. Absolutely. And I think Dr.

Gajewski, correct me if I'm wrong, so far we've had three cell phones? Third one today. Third one today. Oh, wow.

So it had to be taken? Uh-huh. And then given back? Yes.

Okay. We don't have any repeat offenders. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I got one, actually.

Not on the cell phones because we're going to talk about that plenty, but on the attendance policy, I thought that was a really insightful comment about making the consequence for excessive absences remedial rather than punitive. I think that's really, you know, so that's great input, and thank you for saying that. Absolutely. And I was just going to ask, I didn't even realize Dr.

Kaczewski was here, but I was going to ask if you've shared these thoughts with him, with the administration at the high school on both the attendance policy and the self-help. Yes, we did. We had a meeting yesterday, actually. Oh, good.

Tuesday during lunch. So I plan, of course, on keeping Dr. Kacziewski very updated with all of the student opinions. But yeah, no, like his insight has also been truly really helpful and really good.

And I'm very thankful. Good. Good. Well, your perspective is valuable.

So I appreciate you sharing it with us and also with him. So thank you so much. I have one more thing to ask. Sorry.

Thank you for reminding me that we also talked about the attendance policy. I noticed that you said the potential for adding two visits for college seniors who are... And so I would love to know if that feels like enough. I don't know what records have been kept, if any, but it would be great to keep records this year, just see what's the average amount of college visits for each.

I would say that wouldn't have been enough for my kids who did it just last year. So I'm curious because maybe we're – maybe I'm – out of sorts, but they often missed two days of class for just one visit and they went on two different visits. So that's already four days. So again, I could be out of touch, but I'm just curious to know whether or not that seems like a reasonable amount or if there needs to be sort of an individual category for college visits that it's, I have no idea what, but just my thoughts around making sure that that's appropriate for them.

Of course. Just to clarify, you're suggesting, for example, that college visits be completely ruled out as not part of the eight instead of, like, just say implementing a restriction on two? I'm not suggesting it, but I'm saying that potentially that's maybe that's a possible idea. Yeah.

Absolutely. I was hoping, I mean, during our SPSA meeting last Monday with the students, the main topic was the cell phones. So we didn't get much to the attendance policy as we had hoped. And I also spoke with a lot of individual students and a group apart from the SPSA about the attendance policy, but I was definitely hoping to, um, gather more information about that in our next sbsa meeting so i would love to get back to you on that thank you um it's going to be tricky though because the seniors who just they're gone so you know you don't the current seniors don't know how many visits they're going to take quite yet you know what i'm saying so it's kind of a tricky thing if we don't have any current you know info from our counseling department about how often that's happening um but just maybe for this year we could really take a good look at that and keep track and And some juniors, which I would say is really appropriate.

They were. So yeah, I would love for us to really look at that just to make sure that it's an informed decision when we look at that number yes because college visits go um in the excused absence category but it also goes in as a college visit not just like a general excused absence let's say if you were sick exactly so right we might have some data and we can also i can also speak to the seniors this year about how many college visits they took their junior year there you go um and that we can gather some information that way so thank you thank you very much thank you Okay, we'll move on to our presentations. Thank you again, Lucia. The first one, 9.1, is Paragon, who hopefully everyone knows is the consultant for our long-range facilities master plan.

So we will call them up for the presentation and update. Paragon is actually our friendly facilities consultant, and you saw a calendar there that Dr. Patel put up how busy they will be over the next five months, but they've been busy for the past three or four months as well. And Brad Irwin, their principal architect, is here to give you an update.

Good evening. That cheap. So these are some of the things that we're going to cover tonight. Just to give you a good recap of what we've done and what we did today and really where we're going moving forward, show you some examples of some of the work that will be included within the master plan itself, and then some initial findings that are kind of applicable district-wide.

So just a reminder again, because it's been a little bit since we've been in front of the board of some of what our scope of work includes. So we're working right now with a demographer that's looking at not only the current enrollment, but also what the enrollment could look like in the next five to 10 years for inside the district boundaries only. That helps really us inform, as we try to look at space utilizations and as we're talking about how the buildings are utilized, what the rules might be, so to speak, for the student capacity and utilization as we look at the next five to 10 years as well. So far, we've done a lot of...

really a lot of the down and dirty and figuring out what are some of those long-term maintenance needs, what are the facility assessments. So we focused first on the interiors of the building. So a lot of the ceilings, floors, walls, we'll be looking more at the exterior of the buildings this fall, which is your masonry, your windows, your roof. We're also looking at the exterior lighting and we'll show you some examples of that as well as the playgrounds, the playfields, tracks, parking lots, drives, a lot of those little bit more mundane things but really impactful and can have that impact on the budget as well as the usability of each site.

We also want to incorporate the long-term replacement plan for the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning because those are some large, can be some large replacement costs. And we want to make sure that we identify when those things come out of warranty and when they need to be replaced. So as we look at a holistic plan that can be included. And then as we go through our subcommittee meetings and our steering committee meetings, there are things that bubble up that really resolve around space utilization, program needs of the district, activities and athletics.

And so that's really what we start looking at down there at the bottom is how is the space utilized? And as we're hearing some things, how can it be better utilized within the existing four walls of each of the school or does that mean expanded footprint? And coming up with some sketches, some diagrams to help explain that so that we can also put some cost estimates to that as well. So we do have a high level of engagement really across the Clayton community, so we'll be meeting with the district steering committee at least five times and the steering committee really acts as that initial filter, that overarching theme, that lens that looks at really the district wide because we do rely on our building level subcommittees to help give us that more boots on the ground, facility assessment, facility perspective that they see and live every day, whether it's a student, a teacher, staff member, or a parent.

And so getting that perspective from each seat or each lens that they see the facilities at is really important. So we have our first set of meetings now coming back in four weeks, and you can see some of each facility that we're meeting with in addition to some of those special areas that we just discussed added to the scope of work last week. So September and October are really building level focused. As we get to November and December, we get to be a little bit more community wide because we need that foundational element that the building level subcommittees provide us before we go out to the community as a whole.

And so we're gonna be doing community forums at each one of the schools in addition to two district-wise. And what we feel is that by doing that, we should be able to engage anybody that wants to be engaged with. So even though we're not limiting when we're at Merrimack only to Merrimack families or that Merrimack attendance boundary, but we really will try to have that focus be a little bit more about Merrimack so to speak while we're there, but still open to some of the other district-wide needs. But still having the two different points to be able to interact district-wide and to have a community survey within that window allows us to get a pretty deep level of engagement throughout the community and obviously we'll be in front of you a couple of times keeping you up to speed and then there at the end.

One of the things that is really the highlight for us is coming to January so this is just a little bit more, I like your guys' calendar a lot better than ours but this is just a bit more detail here for your reference but basically it culminates in January where we bring all of the subcommittees together and the steering committee, and we really try to get out of the silos of each individual building's needs. And we come together to highlight and select what are the highest priorities for the school district of Clayton moving forward. And it's important that we try to bring that voice of each elementary school. So as we hear something pop up at Merrimack today, we might bring it up in Captain and vice versa.

But for each of the elementary schools to be able to talk about what their priorities are and why, or for the family center to be able to talk about their needs in the high school, to be able to get that perspective is really important to build that community master plan moving forward versus individual buildings. So it really all culminates there in January bringing all those committees together. So any questions on that before I go into some of the examples? Okay, so we actually were able to do oh sorry yeah what's the timing on the demographic information where where will we get that information so just the initial input from our demographers not to expect any wild changes.

Any swings they typically utilize this they start with the September 30th? Official attendance numbers and work their projections from there to kind of buy you an extra year versus just using last year's data So we anticipate being able to have that mid to late October at the earliest Because of course everybody else's reports are based on that same time as well. I So they've done all the pre-work that they can, but we released them in June or July to be able to do that. I just...

I wanted to add one thing, too, before you move on from the schedule quickly that we discussed at the district committee meeting is that on the schedule when you see and the schedule that we had up earlier that there's community forums at each school, that doesn't mean it's only for families that attend that school. So it's basically just spreading them out in different locations around the community so that if you live close to Merrimack Elementary, you could go to one closer to your house than somewhere else. It could be for people with or without kids in our district or at those schools. It was just those locations made sense to host the forums.

But I just wanted to make that clear because we obviously want input from community members that do not have kids in our schools. Definitely. Also, and so they are welcome to attend any of the district-wide or community forums at the schools. And what we like about that, too, is if somebody's more familiar about coming in and out of that facility or drives by it every day, hopefully they're more likely to come in for that forum versus maybe just if it was just at the high school, for example.

Good point. Thank you. And then, Brad, you were going to also do a survey? Yes.

So woven into that timeframe between the community forums, we'll have a community survey that goes out for... We usually have it out there for about two weeks to be able to capture additional data. And what we find by doing all these different steps is that at some point, usually within the survey or the community forum, there's something that bubbles up that just wasn't on the radar that ends up being at least a medium-level priority, if not maybe even a high-level priority. So...

That's what's really important to be able to get that, really that in-depth opportunity for the community to participate. So here are some examples we were able to work through a lot of our scope of work this summer on the high school. So we're just using this as an example, but this will be very similar work that we do at each one of the schools. So what you'll see here in a row pretty quickly is our floor.

It's a facility assessment of the floors, walls and ceilings. So right now, it's pretty basic. The green means it's good. The yellow means it's fair.

The red means it's poor. And we kind of set a time frame of how to budget for those types of when to replace those items. So if it's red, it needs to be replaced sooner than if it was green. So as we put together the facility master plan and put together some budget estimates, we can help project some of these things out based on their current conditions.

This is the flooring, here's the walls and here's the ceilings. Overall, most of the buildings are in great shape. Very little red overall and very typical if not better than what we see in a lot of other districts. We also use this as a really quick reference for areas within the building.

If for some reason, just as an example, we had a lot of conversations about how the art room is utilized or if for some reason somebody says, hey, we need to do an addition off of that wing of the building, it's really quickly, hey, this might be an opportunity to take care of your ceilings in the art room because we've got a bunch of brand new ceiling tile going into this new addition, just as an exam. That hasn't come up, but that's something that has been in the past for other districts that we worked with to be able to utilize this tool in that way. We also start looking at the exteriors usage of the building. So obviously we know that high school students use more than just the south baseball field, but we're looking just as this is an example of just the conditions of the baseball field in the center courtyard.

We start looking at your parking lots and your drives, when those may need to be replaced and to what extent. And then we look at exterior lighting. And the reason we've pulled this into our facility assessments is we've noticed that exterior lighting is typically a high priority item. And so what we started to do is just to analyze it right off the bat.

And sometimes it's as easy as there might be just a fixture that's out. or there just isn't enough fixtures placed, or they were placed right 20 years ago, but landscaping has matured, or the parking lots and drives have been reconfigured in that light fixture is just no longer performing to the level that it once did. So this helps us do look at some light levels and some foot candles to see what's the appropriate light levels around the building, especially when we're talking about high school, but really all buildings have usage beyond daylight hours. And whether it's the morning or evening, we want to make sure that there's that safety of people coming in and out of the buildings, but also the security level as well for just that observation.

And then even though, like I mentioned here, there's a lot of land that the school district utilizes, especially at the high school level that doesn't necessarily own. So we're not doing a facility assessment on Shaw Park, but as we talk about how the students utilize those facilities and what are the needs of, for example, high school or middle school athletics and activities, It really doesn't matter who owns the ground. We need to understand what the needs are from the district so we can include that and identify that in the master plan, how that need is solved. There might be a couple of different ways that it's solved.

It might be just improving what's already there. It might be a different approach. So that's why we're not just totally excluding Shaw Park, for example. It's part of the conversations.

We're just not in there with a fine-tooth comb analyzing if it's green, red, or yellow, just as an example. Okay, so any questions on some of those deliverables before I go into some of the initial findings? Yeah, quick question. So earlier, Mayor Harris asked if the center was part of our scope of work, which it's not for legitimate reasons.

But just how you're talking about Shaw Park, hey, you might want to use Shaw Park for this. Could those same things be sort of parking lot, for lack of a better term, for the center too? This is a very similar approach. We're not going in and analyzing the flooring wall conditions, but it's part of our conversations as it impacts your students and teachers and staff, especially at the high school.

Great, thanks. And that was actually one of the reasons why we wanted to have a separate subcommittee was to be able to help narrow that focus a little bit better. Okay, so some of these apply to multiple buildings, and it's some very common themes that we see really throughout the district. So a proper acoustic treatment means a couple of different things.

So obviously with Captain, it's not only just the open classroom, open concept classrooms, but also the transmission of noise from one floor to the other. It could be the transmission of sound from the cafeteria into the gym and vice versa, or from those spaces into the classrooms. But Captain and Merrimack specifically mentioned those types of issues. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

It's pretty common really in a lot of districts we work with. There's a lot of this up here is pretty common themes not only in Clayton but other districts we work with about, you know, is there the proper temperature controls? Is there rooms or set of rooms that the kids are being frozen out in the summer or overheating in the winter? And so that's something that has come up today as well.

Throughout the district, and you can see a couple areas there, those congregational spaces that are used to have large groups come together just may not be set up well for how they're currently used or may not be sized properly based on the current enrollment. And so some of those spaces are also very hard to expand. It's kind of hard to expand a gym when especially three or four sides of it are surrounded by classrooms or a cafeteria, for example. So some of those core spaces can be a challenge to expand, but It's a need that's been brought up.

Lockers is a good conversation, especially at the high school. One of the conversations we had today was nobody uses the existing lockers, but there's still a need for some lockers because the current lockers are too small. So it's not clear all the lockers out and get rid of them, but how do we adapt the current space and current usage to the needs of the students? So one of the things we've applied at other schools is not getting rid of all the lockers, but let's not replace them.

So if we've got a bank of them that are the originals from 1960s, let's pull those out. They're not being utilized and turning over that floor area for other uses that the students or staff can use on an everyday basis. Because we know sometimes there's some swings in how spaces and things are utilized within the district and between schools. We also looked at restrooms are a pretty popular topic right now, both for the large congregational ones.

So it could be just a refresh. It's 1960 era. It needs to be cleaned up and refreshed. Or we need to look at the privacy and security and observation within each one of those.

But then... Do we have the right number, and are they in the right locations? So we might have the right number of toilets in the facility, but if they're all on the first floor and we've got a second floor full of teachers and they're all splitting one single restroom, there's really not enough restrooms in the building. So looking at not only the condition but also the placement and how they're set up.

A lot of good conversations with athletic and activities about as new athletics and activities that coming have come on. Making sure that there's the properly designed spaces for them and that there's enough of them so practices aren't going till 10 o'clock at night, for example, so. They just pulled out a couple of specific examples like with the softball and cheerleading and hockey field hockey there. Water infiltration issues, it could be from foundation, it could be slab or it could be roofing.

That kind of falls into that general maintenance. It's something that's pretty typical but there's definitely some items in specific locations that we've seen and need to call out and address specifically. Then you also see down there the ability to intentionally use and intentionally design outdoor green spaces. So a lot of your sites are pretty compact.

They're surrounded by streets and homes, and there's not much parking and there's not much green space so really trying to find that balance with the pavement that you have the highest and best use for it that's there and the green space that's there in the highest and best used so being able to have even though you might have a green space that's great for outdoor classroom environments well if it's in the middle of the playground or in the middle of pavement area that is used by recess and gym on those same nice days And you might not really be able to be utilized as a classroom, even though it's there and set up as an outdoor classroom so really taking a look at how those sites, how we can get the best use out of those tight sites. Some conversation just about again your parking is a challenge and accessibility is a challenge in and out of the site so making sure that we have the right visitor parking in the Ada parking in the right locations. And then pretty typical as well, as technology continues to evolve and change and become more prevalent, making sure we have the right power to the building and from the panel to the classrooms and that there's the right outlets. But not only that, so that when you plug things into those outlets, that doesn't then blow the circuits and cause that wing of the school to go dark.

again, pretty typical in a lot of the schools that we work with, but it is a challenge in how we deliver that educational environment to our students and just another, removing those barriers to creating those high-level, high-quality environments. So again, this is really, really high level, just some of the examples, wide range of what we're hearing across the district. Like I mentioned, we had three today, we'll have three tomorrow. And we reuse that first subcommittee meetings to really help brainstorm ideation, bring those things out so that that second meeting that we come back in October, we try to synthesize the data and get it down to a couple You know try to get the list of a hundred maybe down to twenty or thirty and bunch some things together Because we really need them to help us identify.

What are those high priority needs for each one of those buildings? Because there's always more needs than dollars and there's never enough time to be able to meet all those needs and so we really need that help in prioritizing what truly is a high priority versus a want or a or you know look at those needs and And kind of following up again with some of the things we talked about at the steering committee meeting that came up today, too, is that we do not put costs to these priority items until we get to the end. because we really believe if it's $1, $100 or a million dollars, if it's a high priority, it needs to be a high priority. We can figure out the costs later, that's kind of our collective job of figuring out how to pay for it and where to fit it in within the funding, but really we need them to focus on what are those high priority needs of the building and what are the high priority needs of district and not let necessarily the dollars get in the way of making sure that we identify what is truly a high priority.

That's where we're at. That's what we've done and that's where we're going. It's been fun so far, it's been a lot of work. Sometimes it feels like we're about 10% in and other times it feels like we are about 70%.

I think we're probably maybe closer to 50, somewhere in that range. But I forgot to introduce our team. So Alyssa, Mike, and Carly have been heavily involved. We've had other people popping in as well.

But it's us four you'll see more frequently than the others as we go through this process over the next couple of months. Thank you so much, Brad. I have a question, which is obviously so far what you've done is evaluate our current facilities. Where and when in this process do we as a school board, as a community, voice our wish list items?

It's coming out now. So we had some of that pop up during our tours with the building level administration in May. We wanted to make sure that we got in there early We got in there before the seniors left, which was great. But we got in there before The Last Day of School.

And there were some of those things that bubbled up. But really it's when we get into those subcommittees that that's where we truly, kind of as we directed today, we said we do want to hear about some of those maintenance items, especially if they're impacting students everyday learning or things that might not be on our radar, but we really need you, the subcommittee, to help us go to that next step. What are some of the needs that aren't being met? What are some of future programs that we need to consider?

And how do we adapt this space, current space, or how do we have to think new outside of the existing four walls to be able to provide those educational opportunities that maybe the current facilities can't? So right now is the time where all that starts to really bubble up. Okay, good. And I think Maybe Nisha said earlier that we added a subcommittee or at least a meeting about the, I forgot what you called it.

Academics. The academic, right, about programming. Right, right, right. So that hopefully they will focus on that too and know for programming's sake, academics or athletics, what will be needed in the future as well.

Exactly, so what's great about that Even though it was kind of added in late, we strategically fit them in on the 17th because it allows us to get this initial information from the subcommittee meetings. Then they can build on top of that, and we can bring that information right back to the subcommittees again as part of that priority identification. Great. Thank you.

So thank you for the update. I listened as part of the steering committee remotely too while you guys were all here. So I got a lot of the questions, and I know you've taken the feedback from that. One of the questions that I have though that I'm not certain was asked in this way, but I'm sure that the community is wondering about when we think of a long-term facility study, As your demographic studies are finalized in the next month or so and what we're expecting to see and what you're expecting to see based on early reports from your demographers that there should be kind of no change in the demographic, short, medium, or long term.

That kind of indicates to me that people that, you know, the population in the district kind of irrespective of what the demographics may say may stay the same because Clayton is a desirable community to move into. And a lot of that desire to move into community is based on the quality and strength of the school district. So if you assume that is going to be the case now and into the foreseeable future, at least for the time of the demographics that you're looking at, I would think that as new families, either from outside the district or even outside of the City, County of St. Louis are looking at do we move to Clayton?

Do we move to Parkview School District? We move to Ladue School District? At what point if at any during the study is there a comparison of our facilities against those other schools, which potential new members of the community would consider moving to. Or even members of our own community might consider moving towards if we are not kind of, I hate to use this term, but keeping up with the Joneses.

Because that is, I would guess, one of the things that drives. I mean, we know that we're very fortunate from a tax revenue base and from a resource base But at what point does the steering committee, do the subcommittees, does the whole thing come together and we look at it holistically? Not just from a, you know, these are things that have to be done no matter what it costs, but these are the things that you need to do to remain competitive. Sure.

That's a good question. Some of that actually came up today within our conversations at the high school level. Typically, that's where we see those types of conversations happen. It isn't generally speaking not as much at the elementary school level.

I think it's a great question that we need to kind of push back out there to that, especially to the steering committee that can help us look at this more from a district level. And what are some of those, because sometimes that comes down to what types of programs are you offering? And hopefully it's not necessarily just based on the strength of one teacher. We've seen that in other districts where there's a great one teacher and that program thrives and then it just kind of dies off.

And now What was once this state of the art certain part of the facility is now just kind of spin stuck and aged in place and there's no longer that magnet, so I think the steering committee is really that that driver for us to help push us in that direction. Well, I would just add on to that quickly. And I don't have any other comments. But I would just say both to Paragon and to the administration, I think more than what are our local peer school districts doing, I'm sort of curious to know what are other nationally highly touted public school districts, K through 12 districts, doing across the country, at least most of them?

And so, you know, like if we want to continue to be a nation-leading school district, what does that mean for us over the next 20 years? And what do our facilities need to look like in order to match that? I at least, and I see a lot of heads nodding, so that's good. But I think we have an appetite for that.

There's a lot of sentiment around that that we've heard already. And I think if we can... on our side, make that to be a little bit more top of mind within those conversations. I think that would be probably helpful to get a little bit better results maybe at the building level.

Again, I think your direction from Board of Education and that steering committee is going to help us propel to identify which portions of that we need to focus on from that facility standpoint because there's definitely opportunities. And I know you guys had some of that in your proposals, in terms of best practice, best use of space. Because I remember seeing it before we selected you guys. So we're hoping that your thought partners for us there will push from the board level, from the committee level.

But I think that one of the reasons why Paragon was awarded the bid is because you demonstrated through the breadth of your experience and what you guys have already done, and as you've been doing your own research, example of spaces where there were innovative learning opportunities happening kind of throughout elementary school all the way up. So I'd encourage you as you have all those meetings beyond just the steering committee and to the board that you show your work because some of your work is really good. Thank you. So how much of it's all around the same idea here of what you I don't know if I want a percentage, but just overall, how much are you telling us about what we currently have and the shape of that and how long it may or may not last?

And how much is your philosophy to help us see? you know, as education changes so rapidly, as we talked about last year at the community forum, what it is that, you know, our infrastructure will need based on our types of goals, which are, you know, innovative spaces, you know, programming that is, you know, that we're capable of providing, you know, space for, et cetera. I just, I guess I didn't, maybe Kim has a better idea of In your point of view, does Paragon think about how education is changing and then give advice according to where you see education going? Yes.

That's a really good question. So I'm trying to... If STEAM isn't for some reason a priority for this district, isn't part of your strategic plan, not within your culture. I'm not going to be able to drive that thought.

I'm not gonna be able to gain that interest around it. Having the best steam facility in St. Louis County isn't gonna do it. we have to build on what you are doing.

We have to build on the passion, the drive that exists, the things that you're doing well, the things that interest you. I mean, just look at that sports slide. That's pretty cool, right? So how do you build on the momentum that exists within the school and us to come alongside you and help propel you forward even more?

we're good, but we're not that good to be able to like, you know, invent something like that. So I say it's kind of more like 50-50 in that partnership because what I've really enjoyed about one of the things from Paragon Architecture, we strive to be focused in certain market segments because when we do that, we can bring that wealth and breadth of knowledge and experience back from things that we've heard in other board meetings, things that we've executed on in other projects, things that we'd seen within that. And so that's why like within K through 12, we help try to bring that whole breadth of knowledge here. And we just had some good conversation again at the high school where things that the high school was talking about and specifically for, I'll just say like the nurses, was completely opposite than what we heard six months ago at another district.

And bringing that to say, okay, why? Tell me about that. How does this apply? Okay, great.

Now, and so just driving that conversation to a couple levels deeper versus just saying, x needs to be here or we need x it's okay why how do we push forward within that we come back we start to build all these different things together and we say all right well it's not just a b and c individually we got to bring a b and c together to really achieve what they're asking for it's not just the space it's the results of what those spaces can it can can be because it's really about talking to the staff and are you teaching like I said at the community forum last, do we need the same types of rooms all stacked together like that? When these schools were built, education looked different. So I'm just making that general statement that let's really look at this as future thinking as possible. in terms of what our educators are finding they need in order to teach, what structure they need in order teach the way they are currently teaching and hope to be able to teach.

Making that space flexible for that rather than maybe what we're just kind of, you know, schools have been around forever and you gotta build, you know what I'm saying by that? I'm just trying to make sure we are not just locking in what we need now, but obviously long range and thinking about spaces really creatively according to what education really requires as of now instead of in the past. And Key through 12 historically is very good at just adding and adding and adding and adding on. And then you come back, you look and say, if we were to do this all over again, would this building really look like this?

Exactly. And sometimes there's that challenging conversation of do we have to deconstruct some of that and build it back to truly create what that educational environment really needs to look like for the next 40 or 50 years. I don't know where education is going in 20 years, right? But you don't want to paint yourself into a corner too much You want to be able to provide your district with that flexibility to grow and to adapt.

But sometimes it is having some of those hard conversations that we might have to pull back and deconstruct certain elements in order to truly give our kids and our community what they need moving forward for the next two or three generations, and not just continue piecemeal on or just to continue to live in the box because that box served you well for however many years prior to that. And those are some tough conversations and sometimes we have to be that critical eye to be able to do that, but it's still again up to the community on that direction and that moves forward. We just try to provide options and guidance on how to potentially get there. And I would just add to that, Chris, there's a lot of teachers involved in this.

And they are the ones that obviously really know education and what they want to be teaching and what they're hoping to be able to be teaching. They wish they didn't have this space, but they wish they had this space. So they, I'm sure, are the most vocal in this area. Exactly.

And some of it is just really basic. If you create a good space with... Good heating ventilation, good lighting, good daylight, safety and security. You know, this room, if it was just half the size for a classroom, could be adapted in so many different ways over the years.

But if it's in the basement, in the corner, and dark, dingy, and all those things, it kind of doesn't matter what you put in there. It's going to be hard for that building and that space to really feel energized and feel useful. So sometimes it is just as simple as just creating that high-quality space that can be adapted and utilized in the future. Mm-hmm.

So I think this is maybe adding on to what Chris said or was asking. In as much as possible, how can you, as an architecture firm focused on K-12 education, or at least for us focused on that, really learn from the thought leaders in K-12 education of where it is going in the future. So our teachers now are going to be fantastic at telling you what they wish they had now, but what about our teachers in 20 years? What will they want?

And so maybe the architects like you are the people who actually determine this more than the K-12 educators. So I'm just wondering, how do you think about that? So our continuing education, our exposure, national level conferences, stuff like that. But we have to also make sure that we don't outpace the teachers and the staff because it's really easy to do that.

We actually had a school that we had buy in from We had like 20 teachers, the assistant principal and the principal. And by the time we got through design and construction, it was almost 100% turnover, if not. And the enthusiasm for some of the things that we had put in there kind of died out with that change and not as high of a level of support for some of those things at the board level. And so while the space was intentionally designed and well-designed for the based on the needs that were identified, there wasn't that long-term support and effort behind it to go.

And so we, it wasn't revolutionary by any, it wasn't like we were looking 20 or 40 years out. I mean, we're looking five to 10 years, but we kind of outpaced them in that regard. So that's one of just the balances that we have to, that kind of goes back to like if, just that steam example, it's absurd, right? Everybody wants steam, but if there's not that push, if there's not drive, if there's We can get you the best space possible, but we have to match the culture and what you're doing and what you want to be doing as a district.

I agree with the sentiment of everyone here that if there's a great new idea or something that a peer or a national peer is doing, we'd like to hear about it. And I also appreciate the point you're making. I know of examples of schools that have influxes of money to build a particular space and it's not utilized in a useful way. And so it's really important to have the program that's going to go into the space.

And so I appreciate your keeping that in mind. But I do think everyone here has said it, and I'll reinforce it, that if there's an idea that should be thought about, we'd like to hear it. Definitely. Thanks.

OK. Lucia, any questions? Well, thank you so much, Brad and John. Appreciate it, and your team.

Thank you all for being here. That was great. Thank you. Okay, next up, 9.2 is a curriculum update from Dr.

Garganego and an update on the Success Ready Students Network. Hi. So a couple of things for us to focus on tonight. I'm trying to keep this pretty high level and somewhat quick.

in focusing on some updates around curriculum, and then to give you some information around the Success Ready Students Network with the resolution that we're asking you to sign tonight. So when we talk about curriculum, our goal is a guaranteed and viable curriculum. So guaranteed meaning that across a similar course, the experience for a student is the same, and then that it's aligned horizontally that way and then vertically throughout the course sequence, and then the viability meaning that we have enough time to teach the content that we have. And so Robert Marzano's work talks about with high reliability schools, talks about a guaranteed and viable curriculum being an important component of a high reliability school, including the other components are that it's a safe environment, that there's collaboration among staff, so a collaborative culture, and an effective teacher in every classroom.

But the curriculum piece is a really important piece to that. So as we think about our curriculum within our district, we have a six-year cycle. And so we talked about this last year also. The first two years of the cycle is a self-study.

So each content area engages in that self-study to determine their long-range goals. During that time, they will report to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council and solicit feedback from that group. And then at the end of the second year, give a presentation to the board. And then we have that annual approval of the new and revised curricula.

So the groups that are going into self-study this year are all of our humanities groups. And then gifted is parenthetically there because they were supposed to go through before, but we had a change in coordinator. So they'll be coming through the self-study at the same time. So this group will all present to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council this year, and then to you all next year for approval in the spring of 26.

So Policy IF is the policy that really directly talks about the work that we're talking about tonight. And so it's the fact that you direct our staff to implement a curriculum that's aligned to the Missouri Learning Standards, that's aligned within our system, so what I talked about being horizontally and vertically aligned, and then allows each student to succeed. that you'll review and approve the district-developed curriculum, and then the selection and adoption of materials we oftentimes do through that self-study process, or we'll bring something. So like math, last year we brought middle school math out of the cycle, but we had brought the goal ahead of time.

And so those are usually approved through the financials that we bring to you. Last year we updated, we did a complete overhaul of our curriculum website. So the public facing side of our curriculum. And so the things that we're bringing to you tonight are just things that we have changed since that big overhaul.

So you approved that whole website last year. And then I put these into sort of buckets that I thought might be helpful to you. So initially the new courses or a complete rewrite, so those are all middle school or high school courses that we did a complete overhaul to or made such significant, or it's a new course that was approved by the coordinators council. Then we have the alignment within the district.

So you know that through the social studies review, the last social studies review, we made a pretty significant change to the elementary program. Those students are now in sixth grade, so we continue to make changes moving forward. So sixth grade social studies was a complete overhaul also. The legal changes, this is my opportunity to tell you where we landed with elementary literacy assessments.

So if you remember in the spring, I presented to you through the assessment plan that we still didn't have direction from the state as to what that assessment list was going to look like. We, at that point last year, had made a change. We stuck with Fastbridge as our primary assessment and then moved also to NWA as an assessment for the dyslexia screener. We were not happy with that assessment.

The state is no longer in partnership with NWA for that. So most of us, most of the districts that went to that assessment were not particularly happy with it. Our initial plan when I presented this to you in the spring was to stay with FAST for another year, and then we made a decision in the summer to move to STAR. And we're actually very happy with the decision that we made.

So the STAR assessment we started using this fall And it's aligned to Missouri standards versus telling specifically about skills. And so it's giving us what we think is better, deeper information about the students. So we're using that as a screener and then following up with our diagnostics. Some of those are star diagnostics and then some of them are from other companies.

So we're pretty happy with where we are with that decision and glad that the state has finally landed their plane. And then the last category is just adjustments. So we had 176 writers of curriculum this summer and almost 60 different writing projects this summer with curriculum, and a lot of, the majority of it fell within adjustments. So things that were slight tweaks, alignment kinds of things, making some changes based on our work and our focus around our strategic plan around empowered learning, So that's where a lot of our change is centered.

So then as a part of our goal two and empowered learning, last year we joined the Success Ready Student Network, which is a collaboration between Missouri districts. It's a group that's working through DESE And last year we applied to be a part of, really it was just participating in professional learning with the collaborative. The professional learning focused mainly on competency-based education. And so when you think, I highlighted some things within their definition of competency-based education that felt like they really resonated with our work around empowered learning.

So really the sense of like numbers three through seven in here are about the teaching within the classroom and the ways that we're interacting with students in a teaching and learning environment to provide better feedback to them, different kinds of opportunities And then eight is really that sense of real-world learning experiences. So there's a lot of things within the competency-based education piece that parallels what I think sits both with our strategic plan and our profile of the graduate. So this year, what we decided was that it was time for us to apply to be a part of their system design zone. So we were just accepted to their cohort three of the system design zone.

And really what that is, like there's a set of commitments for it but it's continuing on with the professional learning. And so there's last year, Julie Power, our literacy coach and I attended those. This year, Robin Hogg, our new director of assessment and professional learning will join us with those. And then we share that information back with the coordinators council and decide how we're gonna implement it throughout the district.

But as a part of the system design zone, what we're committing to is also participating in research related to interim assessments. And this provides us with an opportunity. We don't have to, but it provides us with an to join in with the waiver, with the state, to look at a different process for assessments and for accreditation. And so not being a part of MSIP 6 could be a possibility for us.

We haven't decided that part yet. That requires us to have a whole lot of other conversation. But our initial thinking was in order to be to even get into that place of having those conversations, we needed to be a part of this work. We had the orientation meeting today with the group and I'm pretty excited about the work because I think it's not only really focused on what I think is important to us from a teaching and learning aspect around empowered learning, but also from an assessment perspective of when I present the assessment report, I often talk about these are like one data point on one day, and it's 70% of our accreditation.

So that's a lot. that's hanging on one day for each child in the district. And so I think this opens up the possibility for us to look at growth differently, to look at it in a more individualized and personalized way, which to me really resonates with what I think we as a system are believing in. So our commitments you see there, it's really the commitment of time and being a part of the work across the state to really think differently about how districts are accredited and how we're measuring growth with students.

So we're excited about it, but a lot of it is just about a difference of priority of time for us. So what questions do you have? I'll be quick, though, to honor your request. So in our cohort, and let's assume we join this.

And my sense is we probably will. But who are the other schools in our cohort? In our cohort, they're mainly – the one other St. Louis school district right now in our cohort is Valley Park.

The other school districts are all either Kansas City or like within the sort of outside of the St. Louis region. The other two cohorts have more St. Louis districts within them.

Okay. Do we – is there – How do you feel about that, like this cohort? I'm sure all school districts, we like them. That's great.

But is that how applicable or not applicable is their work to ours just with different demographic makeup? The way that I anticipate a lot of this looking is a little like parallel play. So we're working within the cohort side by side with one another, and we're interacting with one another, but we're specifically focused on our own work and doing things within our district, but like partnering, like having opportunities to partner and learn from one another. So one of the things in the commitments is that we're willing to be a site um, a place for people to come visit.

The other districts also are a place for people that come visit. And I think that's an opportunity for us to be able to learn from others that maybe we haven't historically looked at, um, to learn from. Okay. And like, what's the, is there, is there any downside?

Like is there a reason not to do this? I don't see a reason not to do it. We came to you probably four years ago to ask about this. And at that time, this was before the first cohort started.

So it was like, do we want to get into this before the work had even started? We were very unsure about the work. We were unsure about the commitment of time and those kinds of things. And so hit pause at that point.

Nisha and I have talked a lot coming back around of my team looks different at this point. There's cohorts have started to do some of the work. I feel much more secure with the work that they're doing, that I feel like it's not as much of a question mark anymore as much as it is that it feels like it aligns with what we believe. Okay.

And then last question, so this is a first step to thinking about our participation in MSIP 6 and getting a waiver. What does that conversation look like? And how long does that conversation take? And what should we expect to hear as far as next steps about that?

So what they told us today is that, so there's really two resolutions that come. The first resolution is the one today that's like are we willing to be a participant in this group? The second resolution is more tied to are we willing to part of the group that is considering, so are we willing to a part of the group wants a waiver from MSIP 6? What they told us today with that is There's a lot of statutory requirements within that.

So it's not just like me coming to the table and asking for it. We're going to have to engage the community in some ways, and so they haven't given us the guardrails for that yet. That's coming at the end of the month. Today we met virtually.

They want to do it with us in person, so we're going to Jeff City to have that meeting. Sounds delightful. Right. If you want to go.

All right. Great. Thank you. Yeah.

So participating in this does not necessarily mean we would try to get out of M6. No. Okay. And to make sure I understand this, we have pre my getting on the board.

So things I've been trying to learn is that we've done a lot of curriculum redesigning. in all of our subjects, to align with MSIP 6. And if I got that confused, then fix what I just said. And so how do you see that either duplicating work you've already done, or maybe I should just stop and let you talk?

Yeah, so I wouldn't say that our curriculum, the work that we've done with our curriculum has aligned to MSIP 6. MSIP 6 is the accreditation piece. And so our work is aligning to the Missouri standards. And then the way that we're assessed through MSIP 6 is assessments that test the student's achievement on those standards.

So I don't think it's going to, like being a part of this work, I don't think is going to undo any of that work. Because the standards won't change? I mean, one would hope that the standards wouldn't change, but the standards always change. I was actually talking to Frank earlier about the fact that things change, like the state changes things with some amount of regularity.

But when we write curriculum in this district, we're pretty specific to looking at at Missouri learning standards and beyond that. So an example of that is when several years ago when Smarter Balanced was, if you remember the Smarter Balanced assessments and the rewrite of standards within the states, within different states, a lot of districts put all this energy into aligning to the Smarter Balance assessment And we didn't, we held tight to what we believe in and those things informed us, but we didn't make a complete overhaul. So then when the state of Missouri moved away from that, everybody else was kind of like oh no, and we were in an okay place because our alignment has always been we're gonna align until Missouri learning standards and then we're gonna look beyond that and make sure that what we're aligning to is both what we value as well as what we're assessed on, if that's a, does that make sense? So I'm not concerned about that.

What I think is a better, so I think the good outweighs the bad in this because if we were to go to a place where we apply for the waiver from MSIP, what we're looking at is replacing a one-time assessment each year with a multi-time assessment which is what our whole district like when you look at our assessment matrix there's a very small part that's tied to the state and everything else in that huge assessment matrix is what we've decided as a district and this aligns to what we've decided is good practice as a district so assessing students multiple times throughout a year out the year using a growth assessment as a measure, as opposed to a static one-time assessment that we don't get the results back until after the kids have moved on to the next grade. You mentioned time. I think when somebody asked what would be a drawback of this time, Can you give us an idea of what that means in terms of your time or your team's time? Yeah, so it's looking like we have monthly meetings that are virtual.

So those feel fine because that's what we did last year. And then it's quarterly meetings that are in person in Jeff City. And that's the that's the minimum piece and that's to be a part of the cohort and then they have sort of subcommittees that we can choose to be a part Of or not choose to be a which which we would have to make that decision sort of based on a our interest and be Like can we allocate our time to that work? And do we value like how much do we value that work to be able to allocate our time to it?

So I feel pretty comfortable with what we have committed to at this point. I think we're going to have to continue to review it, especially if we're asked to serve on these subcommittees and those kinds of things. I think we have to sort of define a line for ourselves, and we haven't defined that yet because we don't know what that potentially could look like. About the waiver...

To what extent have you talked to or will you reach out to and to help inform your decision around whether we do that waiver or go for that by talking to other districts who have done it already? Yeah. So the good thing is that the districts in St. Louis County that are a part of cohort one or cohort two are mainly districts that we would talk to about things anyway.

So you've got Lindbergh, Parkway, Pattonville, Ladue, Kirkwood, MRH. So they're all districts that we're already in communication with and talk through. They've all signed on. I think all of them have signed on for the waiver.

And so I think that would be part of our work would be to talk through what that looks like with them before making that decision. Well, thank you. And I think we have a motion to read, too. I move that the Board of Education approves the district curriculum as presented and that the Board of education approves the success ready students network resolution as submitted.

All those in favor? Aye. Aye. OK, motion passes.

Thank you, Melina. Okay, action items 10.1. We have the second reading of policy BDC, closed meetings, records, and votes. Chris, if you would read that motion, please.

I move that we approve the recommended changes to policy BDC, Closed Meetings, Records, and Votes. Second. All those in favor? Aye.

Aye. Okay, any opposed? Motion passes. Okay, consent agenda.

Chris, if you'd read that motion, please. I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 11.01 through 11.08. Thank you, Jason. Is there anything we want to highlight in consent agenda?

Does anyone have any questions or comments about the Consent Agenda? No? No? Okay.

I mean, the only thing I would say is there's not any new items on here. It's the Wellness Training and Consultation, which we talked about as a Board last year. The Play Benefits Programs and Rates, that's kind of standard order of operations, and then our financial reports, but yeah. Yeah, pretty standard.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

No. Okay. Consent agenda passes. Okay.

Board communications. Well, Jason and Chris had CRSWC, but I guess we kind of covered that tonight already. But if you would like to add anything to that. Speak up.

There was a PTO council meeting. We had a shift in Pam was on PTO council and it didn't work with their work schedule. So I offered to take on PTO council cause I had been on it previously anyway, but because it wasn't on my calendar, I missed it. So I apologize for that.

It kind of all happened within the couple days of the meeting. So I don't have an update on PTO Council, but you were probably there. Was there anything you'd like to share? No, it was their first meeting of the year, so that's usually they call it a jumpstart meeting.

So basically they go over their roles and responsibilities as PTO officers in each of the buildings. So that was the majority. It was like a workshop meeting. Good.

Okay. And does anyone else have any other board communications questions? I'll say that Pam and I went, I guess it was last week, to a training done by EdPlus about board financials. And I was really glad I went.

It was extremely helpful. We were there with a number of other board members. And the questions that were asked were very relevant and helpful and succinct. So I just recommend anybody that, I know a couple of you don't need any of that, but I was really happy to take advantage of it.

Yeah, it was just extremely helpful. And it actually led to, Nisha, that meeting is one of the reasons why that letter that you ended up signing along with so many other superintendents ended up being something that we all noticed as a group needed to be addressed right away because I don't know if you read what Nisha said, but yeah, the idea that the county was not going to send out bills to get taxes paid All of us in the room as educators were saying that that is a terrible idea. And so luckily, because that happened that night, we kind of said, hey, let's make sure that we contact our representatives and that they know, the council, that they know where we stand on how important that physical bill is. I'm not sure if they've reconvened and voted on that yet.

I don't think they have. But anyway, I was glad to be a part of making sure that that was something on our city's, our county's radar. Anything else? I'd just like to say as a parent, I attended open house and I saw some of you.

In fact, Leo's daughter and my daughter have a class together. So we were, we saw each other. And I thought it was great. It seemed crowded, which means like Turn out was great I always appreciate the opportunity to as a parent sit in on classes and meet new teachers here from our teachers and i'm continually impressed with all of our teachers as well, so I thought it was great.

I stopped by the wellness Center where I also bumped into Leo and there were plenty of parents coming in and out of there, which was great so anyway. i'm sure the rest of you probably attended open house as well, if you were able to, but I think it's always like an exciting way to kick off the year and kind of have just like a little. piece of your students day you know vision little view into that. I'd also like to again say that yes, we have a board vacancy on our school board and as soon as we have any information to communicate to the public about how that will be filled, we will be sure to share it as soon as possible.

And with that, we can adjourn. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, meeting adjourned.

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to our joint meeting. Adequate notice has been given and I would like for everyone to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you.

And Chris, would you please read the motion to adopt the agenda? I move that we adopt the agenda as posted. Second. All those in favor?

Aye. Motion passes. I will now turn it over to Mayor Michelle Harris. Thank you.

Hello, everybody. The first thing on my list here is to talk to you about the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. This has been going on since around 2012, and so I don't know, about a dozen years, and it's become really, really a really valuable program in my opinion. This year we have quite a few students, and I see a lot of them here.

I'll introduce them, but The purpose of it is to teach students about local government and get them interested in participating in their own communities. What they do for the school year is meet with all of the different city departments, public works, parks and rec, fire, police, and get a real tour and a real bird's eye view or inside look at what those departments are responsible for. And then they also attend, they each choose a committee, a board or commission to attend throughout the year. And at the end of that time, They make recommendations to that committee and to the board for things that they might want to do or research or look into.

So I think this is – I'm excited about this year with these students. They all seem amazing. We had our first meeting, and everybody was there, and everybody was really engaged. So I'm going to read their names to you, and if you're here, just wave at everybody.

Dasha Arnold. Barron Borick. Violet Edmondson, Nicholas Helmering, Ben Koster, David Lin, Oliver Maher, Spencer Pompeon, Henry Rosenzweig, Yahia Said, Lance Sheets, and Nicholas Vendini. Very good.

And just so you know, we have more applicants usually than we take. and they do have to fill out an application, they do have to have a teacher recommendation. And so it's not just something you can glom onto. So we really are pleased with our students this year and welcome you guys.

And now that you've been introduced It's fine if you want to leave. No problem. Or stay. Okay.

And then the main reason we're here today really is to hear from Tony about the Sports and Wellness Commission annual budget. So I'll turn it over to you. Great, thanks. Well, I think I know almost everyone here, but if I don't, my name is Tony Searing.

I'm the Director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Clayton. and we're going to talk about the Center of Clayton. We're going to start off just talking about some of the folks that we serve. So you've got all this information in your packet, but in 2024 to date, so we know there's still a couple months left, we have about just over 8,300 members at the Center of Claydon who have already swiped in or visited the center over 215,000 times.

It's a lot of people that come through our doors. That doesn't include some of the other folks that we can talk about. Of our members, we've had 844 Clayton High School students, which was last school year, had a membership to the Center of Clayton that they could use Monday through Friday until 4.30. And of those 844 students, 659 of those visited the Center of Clay ton at least one time, which is 78%.

We're really excited for that. We like that they're engaged, we like that they use the facilities and become active. And that also includes, you know, they can come over to Subway or come over during their lunch period and hang out as well too. We also have a seventh grade program for White Island Middle School students And last school year, there were 212 of those students.

And of those students, about 50% of those kids, 101 came to the Center of Clayton at least, again, one time during that school year. So again, they're active. They're involved. We would like to get that number a little bit higher.

So we'll work with the middle school and talk about how we can get the kids over to the Center of We also have over 800 senior memberships at the Center of Clayton. That includes, obviously, residents, non-resident, corporate, but it also includes over 400 folks who have a Renew Active membership, and that's a membership that they can get through their health insurance through UnitedHealthcare that provides them free access to the Center of Claydon, and then we're reimbursed from UnitedHealthcare for those folks for their visits. Again, we're always looking to grow those folks and have them become more active as well. We had over 4,000 people that paid a daily fee last year to come to the Center of Clayton, so that's quite a high number of folks.

Again, we're still coming up from the pandemic when that dipped a little bit lower, but we're looking to increase that as well. We have, of our membership, we had 5,075 of those folks were residents. So over half of our membership base is residents. And then we had 1,800 corporate folks and about 1,400 non-residents who have a membership at the center of Clayton.

That corporate area is still an area that as people return to Clayton with their businesses and with their daily work that we hope to increase that as well too. But the good news is that we are making progress since the pandemic. On the bottom right, you'll see some numbers that we've really been growing steadily by about 1,000 members each year, really since the pandemic. We've had a lot of conversations this year about what is the maximum capacity at the center, how many members can the facility hold without seeming like we're bursting at the seams.

We did some research, and while it's hard to really nail down a specific number, the general thought process is you would have about 10% to 15% of your capacity, and that's not your fire capacity, that's really more of the usage capacity, how many pieces of equipment we have, how many lap lanes we have, things like that. And I'm pleased to say that the 8,300 is over 10% about what our capacity would be, which would be about 6,500 total members. And we are slowly inching towards 15% capacity, which is about 9,800 total members. So that is going to be our goal for FY25, and we're actively pursuing that with implementing our marketing plan as well.

So really, if we look at some of the youth that we've been serving this year, which is obviously a very important part of our day-to-day operations, we had 24 kids who received financial assistance to the Center of Clayton for Center of Clayton activities. This does not include any activities that are outdoors at our city-sponsored facilities, so this was just for the center. that does include adaptive aquatics, which is one-on-one private swim lessons for those with disabilities as well. And that is offset by the Clayton Community Foundation.

They do reimburse us for those scholarships as well. We had about 72 kids that participated in martial arts over the last year. We had 96 different kiddos that stayed in our child care center, which is the kids' center, while their parents worked out. So you'll see later on we'll talk about some expanded child center hours for the next fiscal year.

So we do want to increase that along with the usage and participation by some adults. We also had over 1,400 children participate in just our youth basketball and youth volleyball leagues. Again, that doesn't include the number of kids that participate in the outdoor sports, soccer, baseball, t-ball. So we did have quite a few students at the Center of Clayton during the winter months.

And if you've ever been to the center on a Saturday during basketball, I would describe it as organized chaos. So there's a lot of people there, which is great. We like that. We also had over 500 students get swim lessons last year.

I would say this number is only limited by the lack of available aquatics instructors right now. If we had more qualified instructors, which is a struggle for instructors and lifeguards right now, I would say this never would be significantly higher. But we still are looking for any instructor, water safety instructors or water swim lesson instructors. So if you know anyone, please send them our way.

We had over, thank you to the athletic department for the high school. They let us know that we had over 190 student athletes who practiced and participated at the center. Again, this doesn't include the teams that are outside. This is just volleyball, basketball, things like that.

So quite a few student athletes that come to the center. And then this past summer we had over 800 campers participate in our half-day camp program. So A lot of kids, again, some days it was organized chaos. If it was a warm day or if it was a rain day, there's a lot of participants at the center.

But it's a lot of moving parts, but we make it work, and we think that's what the fun thing to do is. We also provide, obviously, services for adults. And we had over 509 different individuals take part in 400 land-based fitness classes. So that is step aerobics, cycling, Pilates, yoga, things like that.

We had 124 individuals who took part in our water fitness classes last year. And those are currently free for center members, and they will continue to be free. So that is definitely an area that we have room to grow for those folks, but we have seen reduced participation in particular on water fitness classes since the pandemic and we're looking to rebuild those. We also had 172 personal training clients last year which is really great.

Personal training is a nice moneymaker for us, and it also does keep people active with their membership. It keeps them coming back, and we have some great personal trainers right now, so we're able to capitalize on those sessions as well. And then the average number of people that visit the fitness center every day is about 330. So we have quite a few people that are coming and going.

If you've ever been to the center, we're generally busier at the beginning of the week after people went out. They went out to dinner over the weekend. They had fun. They feel guilty.

They come back and work out on Mondays, and then that participation slowly goes down as the week goes on, and then it will ramp up again the next Monday. But we're happy. We think that there's definitely room to grow with some of those numbers, but we are happy to say that we're inching a little bit closer towards our capacity. With rentals last year, we had almost 17,000 people that visited the Center of Clayton as part of a rental.

We have the Clayton Shaw Park swim team rents our pool for their swim team practices. We have multiple different ongoing business rentals who will rent with us once a month, once a week, things like that. So we had a lot of folks come through the door. for our rentals as well.

We had 102 volunteers last year, which includes the vast majority of this is our coaches, our volunteer coaches for our youth basketball and youth volleyball programs. So we thank those folks. We could not do our leagues without those people. But it also includes members of the CRSWC.

They donate their time and talent as part of their commission to provide us with wonderful insight that that we generally appreciate, and it helps us keep our operations running smoothly. And last but not least, we have 170 full and part-time employees at the Center of Clayton. That includes the full-time staff for the city, the recreation staff, the district, which is the facility services staff, and then also all of our part-time employees as well too that work at the front desk, the fitness center, all of our instructors as well. So we have quite a bit of people, quite a bit of activity happening right now.

Any questions about any of those numbers before I jump into the budget? So this year, you should have all received our overall budget outlook for the Center of Clayton. There are some operating fund highlights that we do want to talk about for this year. In FY25, this budget does include about a 4.5% rate increase for all members, resident, corporate, and non-resident.

That's the average fee increase. It also includes about 5% membership growth, which is a little aggressive, but we feel like that is definitely attainable based on the implementation of our marketing plan with the marketing staff person as well, too. So that should generate a little over $380,000 of additional revenue based on this year, based on the membership. We also specifically intended to drive membership.

The next two items, we are planning on offering all free fitness classes for center members. So this includes all land-based and water-based fitness classes. Currently, we have the water-based fitness class are free and some land-based fitness classes are free, but this would include all classes. yoga, Pilates, cycling, basic pump classes, weight training classes, things like that.

This does put us on par with our competition and is specifically intended to drive membership sales. And we also are planning on expanding our Kids Center hours Since we've come back from the pandemic, we have not had evening Kids Center hours, but that was something that we heard that our members do want. We will program adult programming around that as well so that there will be program offerings for people to come, but we will plan on adding evening Kids Center hours from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, again, specifically intended to drive membership sales, and that'll cost about $21,000 for us to do that.

The additional marketing specialist position, we really want to focus on marketing communications for the Center of Clayton as well as implementing the marketing plan that the CRSWC paid for, got the study for last year. So this position is specifically intended to drive that marketing plan for the center for membership. Currently, the center pays for, or there are two people in, three people, I'm sorry, in the communications and marketing department, and the center pays for half of one of those marketing specialists. This person would then, the full salary would be dedicated to the center, and their focus will be the center of Clayton and implementing that marketing plan, which should help us get to those membership numbers that we're looking for.

And then finally, one of the big operating fund drivers this year is also going to be increased utilities. Specifically, sewer, I believe, is supposed to increase significantly this year as well. So that really is driving that to a tune of an additional about $45,000. So when we look at our operating fund revenue, the vast majority of our revenues, over $2.4 million, is going to come from the sale of annual passes.

That has been and will continue to be the largest driving force of our revenue, followed then by programming revenue, which includes, as I mentioned earlier, all the personal training revenue, aquatic lessons, camps that are held indoors, youth sports programs that are held indoor, the climbing wall, which doesn't bring in a lot of money, but it's an indoor program. The program revenue is our next largest revenue generator. And then we also have daily passes. I think it's important to note that when we look at our membership fees each year, we look at our daily fees and our philosophy is that it should not be cheaper for you to buy one daily fee per week, so four per month, than to get a membership.

So we want to make sure that our daily fees are always set up to be in line to drive membership, that if you're a frequent visitor, it shouldn't be cheaper for you to pay multiple daily fees. So we look at those when we look at the membership revenue as well. And then we do bring in, obviously, rental revenue. We have after-hours revenue as well, too, so for larger parties, bar bat mitzvahs, and that helps bring in some additional revenue as well.

Our expenses are largely driven by personnel expenses and then contractual services. Included in the contractual services, it's important to note that about $369,000 of that is for the school district personnel expenses. Again, that's for the facility services staff that work at the Center of Clayton and also included in the contractual service is MPM personnel which is Midwest Pool Management. That's for our lifeguards and that's about $495,000.

So that's also included under contractual services but is really specifically related to personnel. We do have some large IRF and capital expenses happening in FY25, and we do acknowledge that. And we want to make sure that everyone understands where those are coming from because they are larger than we have experienced in the last several years. First and foremost, we do an annual fitness equipment replacement.

Our fitness staff will look at all of the equipment that's up in the fitness center. If there are pieces that aren't performing well is a good way to say they maybe aren't. They're down and broken a lot. Those people, pieces will be removed from the floor.

They'll be replaced. There may be other pieces that just aren't quite as functional. They're not getting as much use. Our staff look at those every year and then we'll do an annual fitness equipment replacement.

We generally will replace a similar number of pieces. So if there's five pieces that we remove from the floor We'll put five back on the floor. Pre-renovation at the Center of Clayton, we were averaging just under $50,000 a year for fitness equipment replacement annually. We did reduce that when we did the renovation because we bought so many new pieces of equipment at that time.

We were able to spend a little bit less those first couple years after the renovation for But we do need to start spending more for the pieces that are getting more use and do need to be replaced. So we did up that from 30,000 to 40,000 in FY25. One of the other programs that we talked about was cycling. So even though I know that Pelotons were very popular during the pandemic, our cycling program continues to be very popular at the Center of Clayton and continues to increase in participation.

However, our cycling bikes have not held up very well. The brand of bikes that we have, the company is, unfortunately, is out of business. So that's not good. So we don't have the parts aren't available to replace a lot of the pieces.

So if we do get all new cycling bikes, that would be an expense of about $45,000. And we do think that that would be an appropriate expense based on the class offerings, the we will need to have to increase based on the member demand with increased membership. Each session, we are increasing our program offerings for fitness based on the increased membership that we currently have. So we expect that to increase as well.

There's a large technology project planned for FY25 to the tune of about $89,000. And I believe it's for some server replacements. And again, that's only the center's portion of the entire project as well. So only the 17% that's allocated to the center of Clayton is charged to the CRSWC's budget.

Okay. And then finally, as far as IRF expenses go, we do need a new commercial washing machine. We have towels that we wash on a regular basis. We do need some more bleachers.

I don't know if you've sat on the bleachers in between courts two and three, but they have been there since the center opened about 24 years ago. So they certainly need to be replaced and then At the request of athletics, we also are going to hopefully add another set of bleachers so that one more bleacher that can accommodate more folks for matches as well too. So we also have some maintenance, annual maintenance and repair that we will do on all of the basketball goals at the center. But there are six goals per court.

So there's 24 goals that are just at the center of Clayton. So depending on what needs to be done at those, sometimes it can be a little bit more costly. But those are the IRF projects that we have planned for FY25. We do realize we have quite a large capital project planned for FY25, which is a flat roof coating on the roof over the gymnasiums.

That was one of the two major things that was delayed when we did the center renovation, was the new roof for the gyms and then the new HVAC unit for those areas as well too. The flat roof coating is expected to extend the life of the current roof at least 15, or we hope at least 15 years, which would buy us some time to then save up for what will certainly be a much more expensive roof than $250,000. But then we also, and that's not part of this budget, but the next probably I would say four to five years we would need to address that. the HVAC unit that will eventually need to be replaced.

But I know that Jim Bernal is working on trying to find out exactly how long the current one will last and what we need to do to make that happen. And then we also need, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Can I ask a question? Sure.

Just in terms of the flat roof and also the new cycling bikes, Are you getting warranties guaranteed for a certain amount of time, like with the roof, 15 years, the cycling? If they go out of business in two years, we have to rebuy all the bikes. I mean, is there some way to ensure that we'll be able to replace these or repair them as time goes by? We certainly will get a warranty for the new cycling bikes.

The ones that we currently have are about eight years old, so my guess is the warranty will probably be for a year. It won't be much longer than that, but there should be some kind of warranty with those. I can't really speak to the flat roof coating over that. I know that Jim Burnell is the one who got those numbers together, and I'm not sure what the warranty would be on that, but I can find out.

And then last but not least, as far as capital projects for next year, we do have about $36,000 planned for new pool heaters. Again, those are all on our capital project schedule. I can tell you we do need that one because the one in the leisure pool broke today. So I know that the facility services staff is putting that back together and they're going to do what they can to limp us through the next three weeks of the fiscal year and then they'll look at purchasing another one for that pool as well.

So... Again, we acknowledge that these are quite large capital and IRF projects for the next year. And we don't take these lightly. So we want to make sure that we did all of our research and we did include the things that we think are needed to make the center successful for the next fiscal year.

We do have some tenants that are in our building. Oasis, which occupies the second floor at the center of Clayton, they're a great partner for us. They provide senior services and we don't have to duplicate their efforts for those. They do pay a utility and supply reimbursement that includes reimbursement for paper products and the facility services time as well.

It's about $48,000 a year. And then we get use of those rooms in the evening hours after they're done for the day, about 3.30 every day. We can use those for rentals if we want. They haven't been quite as popular since we have a party room that's right off the pool right now, but they work perfectly for small group meetings.

If there's like a scout meeting or a small neighborhood meeting, those rooms are a little bit cheaper to rent than our first floor meeting rooms, but it's a great partnership for us. We also have Subway, as you know, in our building. And I think the students like Subway and we see them down there quite often every day. I think the corporate world is always a little bit taken aback when the students come back because all summer long it's been quiet at Subway.

And then when they come back during the school year, people are like, oh, I need to adjust my schedule for getting a sandwich. But it works out quite well. We get a percentage of their sales based on $180,000. The sales are picking up, but they are still a little bit slow to rebound since COVID.

And then we do have projected revenue of about $8,000 for the fiscal year FY25 is included in this budget. And then the Clayton Community Foundation also pays us a quarterly utility reimbursement for their office, which is across from where the meeting rooms are at the center of Clayton. It's a very small office. They meet folks there sometimes just to talk about the history of Clayton.

But they do pay us a utility reimbursement for that area as well. So when we look at the fund summary for FY25, again, we do acknowledge that it is a little eye-opening, I guess, when you look at the bottom line. I think it's important to note that even though we have added the free fitness classes, the additional 50% of the marketing person, and the... Even in kid center hours, our overall funding deficit is going down, albeit about $10,000.

But it's really this year's deficit is really due to the additional IRF and capital expenses that we are expecting. So. it is for FY25 just over $660,000. However, when we talk about cost recovery, you know, the average cost recovery for a rec center in the country is about 28%.

We realize that the Center of Clayton is quite different than the average recreation center, so we do acknowledge that. When the Center of Claydon was first, I guess, developed and talked about, There was a study that said we should expect about 85% cost recovery, so that is our goal when we look at it each year, and that is without the contributions from our parent organizations. So the upper right cost recovery without contributions number is that 83%, and we are... Again, our goal is 85%, so we will do everything within our power to try to get as close to 85% as possible when we talk about cost recovery.

You know, if we did include the parent contributions, it's more along the lines of 90%, but really without those contributions, it is 83% for FY25. Again, just operating. That was all of my slides, and I'm sure people have some questions, so I'm happy to answer those. I have one probably easy, maybe easy question.

I believe that we changed the rules for rentals outside of operating hours to allow alcohol. Yes. With the idea that would get us additional programming like trivia nights and things like that. When did that happen?

And have you seen any increases due to that yet? Yes, we have seen increases. That went into effect, was it last fiscal year? Yeah, last fiscal year.

And I know we already have events booked further out. And we've probably had about 10. I would say we've probably had 10 after hours. And it's one of the areas too with the new marketing person that we've really done a soft push of it.

We haven't really been up to that yet. I kind of wanted to see how it worked, too, with hiring the additional police officer. Yeah, and the last time I talked to Chief Smith, they did not have any concerns about it and that the after-hours rentals were going well. I think one of the things that's important to talk about, too, is that since the pandemic, we have adjusted our hours a little bit.

And on the weekends now, we're open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., So that 5 p.m. close time has really allowed us to offer more after hours. We used to close at 7 p.m.

on Saturday nights, and your rental couldn't start until an hour after we closed. So your event couldn't start, including setup, couldn't even start until 8 p.m. So with this adjustment of us closing at 5 p.m., an event is able to start with the setup at 6 p.m., and we're able to have a little bit more flexibility to offer more after-hours events. Thanks.

You're welcome. Thanks for coming. You're welcome. You always give a great presentation every year.

Oh, thank you. So I just have one question. So I think you said practical capacity is 85%, which is about 9,800 members. And I know if we set aside the target kind of percentages on cost recovery, it looks like if you get to that target of 9,800 members, that with an increase of less than $70 per member, which I know that's not straight line because you have residents and non-residents and...

students that pay and some students that don't pay. Is there any thinking to once you're at that capacity and there's not this deficit between supply and demand that you could be totally self-funded? I mean... That would be the ultimate goal, I guess.

Yes, we have been self-funded in the past. There have been times where we haven't had the parent organizations have only contributed to IRF and capital, depending, you know, that was probably 15 plus years ago. And then... you know, as new facilities started to open up.

But I think our first goal, I guess, is to get to 85% cost recovery and then that would be our next goal is to get to as close as 100% as possible without parent contributions. Yeah, because I think, I mean, once you reach a practical capacity, then you've effectively demonstrated through a free market, right, that your supply and demand is even. And then I think that our rates there are much lower than, for example, a Lifetime Fitness or any other alternatives that you could slowly start to look at optimizing your rate structure where you could effectively be really self-funded. And you may even begin to build a capital fund for your longer-term CapEx needs.

We have talked about in the past, and many, many years ago, the center did have its own capital fund. funding where they did build their own capital fund. But then at some point in time, the parent organizations decided they would rather build their capital funds and contribute to the center annually. So again, that would certainly be a conversation that we could have going forward.

But yeah, I'm happy to have that conversation in whichever way the boards decide that they want to move. It's fine with me. But yeah, it's certainly... It seems like it's within reach.

I think it is. I think it could be, yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, our rates are definitely lower than Lifetime Fitness, certainly. You know, our non-resident rates do creep up a little bit high.

You know, right now it's over $100 a month if you're a non-resident family. So because of the center's proximity to some non-residents, I think, you We need to just keep that in mind as well, too. But I certainly think it's worth consideration and yes, a possibility. Well, and I do think, yes, we're much less than lifetime.

But as far as our comparables, which other rec facilities, which a lot of the rec facilities you can't really compare to the center because we have a lot of amenities like the pools, the gyms that, you know, the Heights doesn't have or that the new Olivet Rec Center doesn't have. So we are significantly higher than any other rec center in the area. So I think it's just striking that balance with these. Yeah.

But we've been there before. We can get there again. Tony, question for you. You spent a lot of time talking about kind of the revenue side, right?

So we're going to hire a new marketing person. We're going to raise rates. We're going try to grow folks. Can you spend some more time or some time talking about what you're doing on the expense side?

I saw if I read the numbers right, looks like personnel costs have gone up almost 50% from 2022 till now. So can you talk a little bit about what you either plan on doing or have done to kind of control that side of it? So our personnel, as I mentioned earlier, were either city of Clayton employees or school district of Clayton employees. So the full-time staff salaries that are charged to the center of Clayton are really only for those people that work in that building.

And then those are dependent on the city's pay structure, which they implemented a new pay structure in FY24, and the school district's pay plan, which I don't know when they most recently updated theirs. But those are for all the full-time Some of our staff positions are split weird ways. Like we have a community recreation supervisor who's paid 50% out of the city, 50% out of CRSWC. So we look at that every year.

And then our part-time employees have had significant pay raises over the past several years in the attempt... For many, many years, Clayton was one of the highest paid part-time employees, part-time employers... Wait, employers for part-time employees. We are significantly ahead of most other cities, rec centers, things like that to attract the best qualified candidates.

During the pandemic and then subsequent years, many cities caught up with us. So we made a concerted effort within the last couple of years to increase our part time pay plan. Our part time pay plan, the starting rate for the lowest paid, I don't want to say it like that. The starting rate for any part time person in our department is $15 an hour and then it goes up from there depending on are you a shift supervisor?

Do you teach fitness classes? Do you teach aquatics classes? Those salaries have increased over the past several years, and that was a concerted effort on the part of the city and the center to implement those. We did that for the outdoor positions as well.

This budget in FY25 does include a 3% merit increase for part-time employees. And it looks like there's more cost being spent in the full-time than the part-time staff, if I'm looking at these numbers right? Probably I'd have to double check. Part of it is what I'm thinking through and tell me if my logic's right.

From the school board and from the city standpoint, while we're talking about trying to break even, we have ourselves to point to when it comes to the expense side because we're the ones approving salary increases for a lot of the staff, at least the full-time staff. Correct. Okay. Yeah.

And other than that, I think that our other contractual, our supply accounts, we operate pretty lean. I mean, we don't buy stuff unless we really need it at the center of Clayton. We don't spend a lot of money on office supplies or rec supplies or things that we generally don't need. We will bid out large contracts to make sure that we're getting the best price as possible.

But we do not, in my opinion, I don't think we have a lot of fluff in our budget otherwise. Thanks. You're welcome. Well, I'll jump in.

And first of all, I just want to thank Tony and Valerie over the past year. You know, we've had a handful of conversations, and I really very much appreciate all the work that's gone in here. And to Kim's point, I think through that work, we've sort of figured out there is kind of a pathway to get to fully funding operations. But I think, you know, what Jeff said is basically right.

Whatever we decide, this group sitting at this table is voting on this every year. And whether we like it or not, the operating deficit is you take out the capital contributions, it's going to be about $750,000 give or take this year. And we just need to decide whether we're OK with this or not. And I think we're not totally, even within our boards, I think we just have different perspectives on this.

And if the center opened up 24 years ago, and we decided on this 85% figure, cost recovery figure 24 years ago, we probably ought to take some time over the next year and just decide what are the financial outputs that we're expecting from management. Otherwise, they're just sort of throwing darts against the wall, hoping that we're going to be happy every September when we get back together. So I, one, just wanted to thank you guys for the hard work over the past year, but then also just sort of perhaps plant the flag that I think that's the conversation that this group needs to have as it relates to the center over the next year. And thanks for reminding me.

I'd be remiss if I did not thank Valerie Eagle. She's the primary point person for the Center of Clayton and is the one who puts together, gets and gathers all this data for you guys. So I thank her and then the rest of my staff as well too. So, Jason, you just suggested we should be having some kind of discussion, and I don't know what you think that looks like.

But I just want to share that I think the recovery since the pandemic and what you're planning and what you've done has been great. And I don't have... expectation that this community service that we offer is has full cost recovery I think if there's a way to get to it that's great I'm not gonna tell you to stop and it's I think it's wonderful but like I don't lose sleep over this I think it's an amenity for our community and I think it's something that I know as like an elected official from Ward one I feel like totally comfortable supporting with the goals that were set up. Now, if other folks want to like research and try to plan something else and present it, I'm not saying I'm not open to it, but I feel really good about the position of the center and the improvements that have been made in the last year or two.

Only because she called me out, I'll respond, so yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what you're... No, I... I don't think we have a lot of division on our board, I guess.

I could be wrong. We haven't taken a vote on it, but like... Yeah, I'm not, I didn't say that that's, you know, full cost recovery is what we need to aim towards. I just think it's been 24 years.

This is, the budget gap is going to get wider. You know, the cost, the increase in expenses is growing faster than the increase in our, you know, membership dues, right? And you're going to bounce out at 90%. And at some point it's going to be a problem for someone, maybe for both bodies, you know, and I'd rather us work through it through the commission.

That's, you know, that's kind of what I had in mind, you know, not some like grandiose how, you know, summit, but through the commission and through feedback from our respective boards. try to get a sense of do we need to update what we're guiding management to, to what the financial outcome should be. And then we can each project our own budget based on that, right? But if we're going to be charged additional money at the end of every year to fill the hole, that chargeback is only going to grow over time based on where we're headed with all this.

And so I'd rather do it while we can than, you know, be reactive. I think part of that, too, The center, looking at communities and looking at the things that are provided, it seems like I am very comfortable, as Becky said, with this is an amenity for our community. And given that, we do have to be fiscally responsible in how we provide that benefit and make sure everything's in balance. Very similar to what you said, the two boards both agree with that.

Maybe what we need to talk about is I think you all have done a beautiful job in doing this. I think that an 85% recovery is, from the little bit I know, is pretty unheard of, that we're doing very, very well. Obviously, I'd love 100%. Maybe what we talk about is if both boards are still comfortable with that going forward and maybe be more realistic in what we say our annual contributions are versus every year saying, oh my gosh, we have to cover an additional whatever.

Being more honest about it, I think, would give us better conversation and more constant over the years as well versus each year having that jump. And I imagine, yes, as the building continues to age despite renovations, despite everything else, it will get more and more expensive for both of these bodies. I would just say, Kim, I agree with you. At some point we're going to cap out on revenue somewhere unless we keep raising rates.

And then I think, Jason, to your point, I think this is also part of that conversation is where do we feel rates need to be? Not an actual like dollars and cents, but there's going to come a point where we're going to say, look, that's just more expensive than we want to charge folks. And if that's the case, then we need to set it, you know, whatever the number is, we just assume we're all going to eat the rest of it. And if we don't believe that, and we're like, we just got to keep raising rates because we want to be self-sufficient, that's okay too, I guess.

But Jason, to your point, I'd rather have that conversation now so we have a roadmap the next five years than get five years from now and we're all writing million-dollar checks to try to cover stuff. And if we want to make it free for every resident, we could in theory want to do that. I think it's worth, instead of just plodding along, raising rates to try to balance, we just need to have that conversation so I would agree with that or make the decision as to what we want this amenity to be for the next decade. Well, and I know we've talked about a study related to that because somebody 20-some years ago came up with this number.

And I know that there was obviously a cost associated with something like that because I think just coming up with some random number, whether it's, I mean, if we're not getting to 85%, it's 80%, and everybody feels good at the end of the year with 81%. But yeah, I mean, I agree. I think managing expectations is good and having more of a roadmap. But I mean, I guess I'm more with Becky.

I think not that I don't want... Not that I don't want there to, I guess if we need to adjust expectations to make everybody feel more comfortable. But again, this is a community amenity. I think nobody wants to profit from this or nobody wants money left over at the end of the year.

I mean, I guess if it's there, it's there. But in the end, I think we have to look at this for what it is, an amenity for our community, a great service to our students. And that's just how I feel about it. Well, Bridget, I think the question is, okay, what does that amenity look like?

Is it an amenity that's $500 a month that most of our community can't live in? And if that's not the case, then again, I think that's what we're talking about. It's not that it shouldn't be. It's how do we provide that amenity?

Again, is it $500 a month in order to kind of break even when we've capped out enrollment? Or do we say, look, we don't want it above 250 and we're just going to eat the rest. I think, and I don't put words in Jason's mouth, but I think that's kind of what he's trying to talk about is how we kind of figure that out. Just predictability around the business model, and therefore, to Susan's point, I mean, therefore we know this is what we all chose to spend.

We probably should not wait 24 years before we revisit that, you know, so that there's – the expectations are clear both to us and to Tony and Valerie, you know, and whoever else. I might suggest that we I think Bridget is right. We would need to do a big analysis We would need to a study that costs money And so we would need to budget for that. So if we don't have it in this year's budget I don't know if we talked about a budget amendment of some sort down the road for this But I think we would need to set aside some money to have us, you know, because for example, I We offer certain things, and I know we just got done doing a livable communities plan, and I frankly haven't taken a dive into it yet.

It just came out. So I don't know how much that information might impact the center. Hopefully there's a lot there for us to use, but I think we have to look at not only the finances, but what are we providing the community, and what does that look like in the future, and what are people gonna want? And maybe that's less expensive.

Maybe that's more expensive. Maybe we need to consider generating an endowment of some kind and having an arm like the Clayton Community Foundation become a partner. So I think there's a lot you can... You can do.

I think we need to take a look at it holistically, not just are we going to be able to break even in five years. I mean, there's got to be a lot more to it than that, and I think that will inform the possibilities of doing better on the finances. So there might be a lot of opportunities that we can take advantage of. I mean, to be clear, this is not a break-even proposition.

Right. So there is no scenario which you'll break even for more than a year or two where you won't eventually run into a deficit again that continues to grow. And as school board members, our constituents are students. And so projecting what that growth is going to be and how much it's going to cost us is different than the calculation perhaps that you make as aldermen in terms of the community benefit that provides to the greater, wider community.

So that's why understanding these expectations, knowing what it is, And as a school board, we may say yes, a million dollars a year as far as a contribution is worth it for our students. But at what point is that going to be too high if there's not additional improvements made in the center, if we're not competing with private fitness centers? What is that limit where eventually the partnership either has to change or come to an end? And I think if we don't start thinking about some of that long-term planning the same way that you guys are doing your community studies on livable communities, 20 years down into the future, you can blindly go into this and then we'll be in a position where, God forbid, we'll be forced to based on fund balances when none of current school board members are potentially sitting at this table where you've got to make a decision.

And the partnership that's existed for a long time because we haven't put the planning in place for it then has to be dissolved. Yeah, I think that being intentional at all times is important and stay on top of it. And as Michelle mentioned, the Livable Communities Plan, if you look at that, it's when... I guess I just caught when you said you.

It involves our family, it involves our kids. What are we serving? A lot of it was that multi-generational coming together which serves the district and the city. So I need to delve into it again.

And it's also a good opportunity as you all start your long-term planning because we are talking about the same people, a lot of the same people with the needs and figure out how we want to serve and how best to use our resources. So that just reminds me that I know you guys are doing a facilities plan. So I think that the results of that could really be important as it might impact the use of the center for the district, and that would be important for this big, hairy study that we're talking about doing. So I feel like we're about a year away from being able to dive into your question very well.

We have your input on that plan, and then we'll have our livable communities info, but We need all these pieces to figure out how to optimize this great facility that we've got. It is attached to the school, so I don't know how we split that off, yeah. Yeah, so I was just going to kind of follow up on that vein, Mayor, that I was curious, since the facilities master plan is just kicking off, what, if anything, have you put in scope as it relates to assessing and planning and making recommendations related to athletic and aquatic facilities? What does the scope look like for the consultant there?

And part of the scope for that work would be the athletic facilities that our students use, the gymnasiums specifically. Beyond that, we have not gone into studying that. So it's really the athletic facilities, which would be the two gyms, the weight room. Does the district use the pool?

We do. We do. Okay. All right, so you've set a scope that's the...

And when you say the gyms, you mean the gyms that are in the center, not Stuber? Correct. Okay. Yes.

So you're doing some aspect of looking at the facilities that are in the CRSWC for the district, but not the full... Correct. Okay. Okay.

Anybody else? Well, thanks for your time. I just wanted to tell everybody thank you. Again, I mentioned Valerie, but we also work with Jim Burnell from Facility Services and Steve Hudson with Athletics.

So thanks to those folks as well because I do think we have a great partnership and we work well together. Thank you, Tony. Great job. Well, thank you, Tony, so much for coming and for the very clear...

visual presentation as well as your explanation we appreciate it thank you um and before we adjourn i just want to thank um all of the board of aldermen and mayor harris and David Gipson for joining us tonight i think any opportunity we get to work together socialize together um is great and so i appreciate the opportunity to be together and thank you for joining us and also for dinner. They're coming for dinner with us too, so thanks. On that note, are we gonna be doing our breakfasts? Are we continuing the quarterly or whatever breakfasts that we used to do?

We have, well I think like what we did last spring I think we've talked about one. I'll get back to you. Yeah, because I think that might be kind of a good way to go. And I liked the breakfast we did last spring because it involved everybody instead of just select few.

Instead of taking turns. So maybe we'll do that again. Yeah, sounds good. So we'll talk.

All right. But thank you. So anyway, thank you to the Board of Aldermen for joining us for dinner and for the meeting. So great to see everyone.

And I will turn it over to Chris to adjourn. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. And the Board of Aldermen? No, they adjourned.

I have no idea. We're just your guests. We're just here. Yeah, that's okay.

Okay, you got it right, I guess. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Okay, motion passes. Meeting adjourned.

Joint Board of Education/Board of Aldermen Business Meeting School District of Clayton September 4, 2024 Meeting Minutes

Members Present:

Ms. Stacy Siwak –President Ms. Kim Hurst –Vice President Ms. Chris Win –Secretary Mr. Jason Growe –Treasurer Mr. Leo Human – Director Dr. Pamela Lyss-Lerman - Director

Non-Voting Attendees: Dr. Nisha Patel – Superintendent Dr. Milena Garganigo – Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Dr. Kelly Sollberger – Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Dr. Cameron Poole – Chief Officer of Equity, Inclusion & Accountability John Brazeal, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Puls – Chief Communications Officer Luke Heitert – Chief Communications Officer/Safety & Security Liaison Lucia Lerena – 24/25 Student Representative to the Board Heike Janis – Executive Assistant to Superintendent/Board of Education

1. Joint Board of Education/Board of Aldermen Business Meeting – 6:00 p.m. Information: 1.01 Adequate Notice/Call to Order The meeting was called to order at 6:00 p.m. Adequate notice was provided. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. City of Clayton Attendees: Michelle Harris, Mayor Rick Hummell, Alderman Ward I Becky Patel, Alderman Ward I Susan Buse, Alderman Ward II Jeffery Yorg, Alderman Ward II Bridget McAndrew, Alderman Ward III David Gipson, City Manager Toni Siering, Director of Parks and Recreation Kathleen Gund, CRSWC Member June Frazier, City Clerk Absent: Gary Feder, Alderman Ward III

Action: 1.02 Adoption of Agenda Adopt the agenda as posted. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kim Hurst. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

2. Recognizing Our Own Information: 2.01 Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council Mayor Harris introduced the students and provided information regarding the Youth Advisory Council Program

Board of Education Meeting September 4, 2024 Page 2

3. Clayton Recreation Sports and Wellness Commission (CRSWC) Annual Update/Budget Fiscal Year 2025 Information 3.01 CRSWC Update and FY25 Budget Presentation Toni Siering, Director of Parks and Recreation, from the CRSWC provided information about the Center of Clayton and shared the budget presentation with the Board of Education and the Board of Aldermen.

4. Adjournment 4.1 Adjournment That the Board of Education adjourn the Joint Board of Education/Board of Aldermen Business Meeting. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kim Hurst. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

5. Board of Education Business Meeting Information: 1.01 Adequate Notice/Call to Order The meeting was called to order at 7:01 p.m.

Action: 1.02 Adoption of Agenda Adopt the agenda as posted. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kim Hurst. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

6. Public Comments Information: 3.01 Public Participation at Board Meetings No public comments were submitted.

7. Superintendent Communications Information: 4.01 Superintendent Communications Dr. Nisha Patel, Superintendent, provided an update to the board members and the community.

8. Student Representative to the Board Information: 5.01 Student Representative to the Board of Education - Update Lucia Lerena, student representative to the Board of Education, shared with the Board of Education and the community information about upcoming meetings with students across the district.

9. Presentations Information: 9.01 Paragon Architecture – Consultant for Long Range Facilities Master Plan Brad Erwin, Paragon Architecture, provided an update on the work of the Long Range Facility Master Plan (LRFMP) that has taken place up until today, including information from the district steering and the building subcommittee meetings.

Action: 9.02 Curriculum Update That the Board of Education approves the District curriculum as presented and that the Board of Education approves the Success Ready Students Network Resolution as submitted. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kim Hurst. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

Board of Education Meeting September 4, 2024 Page 3

10. Action Action: 10.01 Second Reading – Policy BDC: Closed Meetings, Records, and Votes Approve the recommended changes to Policy BDC: Closed Meetings, Records, and Votes Motion by Chris Win, second by Stacy Siwak. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

11. Consent Agenda Action (Consent): 7.01 Consent Agenda Items 7.02 through 7.13 Motion to approve consent agenda items 7.02 through 7.13. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kim Hurst. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

 11.02 PreventEd – All In Coalition MOA  11.03 Agreement with SWELL Schools Well for Wellness Center Training and Consultation  11.04 2025 Employee Benefits Program/Rates  11.05 July 2024 Financial Report  11.06 July 2024 Disbursement Report  11.07 Personnel  11.08 Minutes

12. Board Committees Information: 8.01 Board Committee, Community and Liaison Reports Ms. Siwak informed every one of the change of the Board member representative on the PTO Council. Due to a conflict in the work schedule, Dr. Pam Lyss-Lerman is not able to be the representative and Ms. Stacy Siwak will replace her on the council. Ms. Chris Win and Dr. Pam Lyss-Lerman attended the MSBA sponsored Board Financials workshop at Education Plus. Ms. Siwak shared her experience about attending the high school Open House event. Ms. Stacy Siwak concluded her report sharing information with the community regarding the intent of an upcoming meeting to discuss the board vacancy. The Board of Education will share information regarding the vacancy after the meeting.

13. Adjournment Action, Procedural: 10.01 Adjournment That the Board of Education adjourn. The meeting adjourned at 8:28 p.m. Motion by Chris Win, second by Jason Growe. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yes: Kimberly Hurst, Stacy Siwak, Chris Win, Jason Growe, Pam Lyss-Lerman, Leo Human

______________________________________

___________________________________________ Stacy Siwak, Board President

Chris Win, Board Secretary

Date: September 4, 2024