October 30, 2024

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

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

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

Thank you. Thank you Thank you Get started Adequate notice has been given. If everyone would please rise and join us in saying the pledge. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Spervantage, P.J. Bord, P.J. Bord, It feels appropriate. And the reason we used to meet, and the reason behind meeting in different locations in the district is, our hope, I should say, is that maybe it's not as intimidating for other community members to show up if they're in a space that they're used to coming to on a more regular basis.

So we will also have a future meeting at Y-Down, I believe, and the center of Clayton as well. Right. We picked one elementary school. Captain was it.

So thank you, everybody, for coming to a different location. Chris, will you read the motion to adopt the agenda, please? I move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda as posted. Okay, all those in favor?

Aye. Okay, any opposed? Okay, the motion passes. And I will turn it over to Lisa Sell, Principal of CAPTN, for Agenda Item 2, Recognizing Our Own.

Yeah. Hi, everyone. Oh, boy. Hi, everyone.

I'm Lisa Sell, and it's a privilege to be the interim principal at Captain Elementary this year. But the other day I was at a meeting and we were hosting a, I guess I call it the guiding light meeting, but it was a multi-tiered system of support guiding coalition meeting. And these two women plus our social worker, Katie Burkhart. So we have Dr.

Anthus right here and we have Crystal Taylor. She's the counselor here. And Katie Burkhart, who is our social worker, I was just sitting in this meeting and I was just so impressed, impressed enough that I text Dr. Patel and I was like, what's that thing that we call when we recognize people of our own?

And I was like, oh, that's it. We recognize our own. And so I thought this would be perfect. And then knowing that Captain was hosting the meeting, it seemed like it was an ideal match to say, let's let's showcase these three women.

We are sorry that Mrs. Burkhart went home ill today, so she's not able to be recognized. But with that, I just kind of wanted to share just a little bit of the work around social emotional learning that's happening here at CAPTN because it is truly amazing. Been in a lot of different spots, watching a lot of social and emotional learning growing over the past few, well, probably over the past decade, to be honest, in various locations.

And I've never seen anything so transforming ever. And it's based on the work of these three ladies are like the guiding force behind it. So I just wanted to share a little bit of a timeline and then just shout their praises. So in the fall of 2022, the counseling department here in the district purchased Character Strong as a resource for counseling lessons to be, the counselors were in charge of doing those lessons within the classroom.

And the main message from Character Strong was be well be kind and be strong At the time the second grade team here at Captain had a tricky group of friends and noticed that Crystal impact on the classroom was making a significant difference such a significant difference that the teachers started presenting lessons daily too to make a positive impact on these kiddos These kiddos now are our current fourth grade So last year there was a lot of effort around character strong as well increasing an interest across the classrooms and just increasing the desire for others to get involved At that point, they just wanted to infuse as much character and as much social and emotional learning as they could into the classrooms because they saw a direct connection that was making a difference in the school day here at Captain. At that time, Crystal Taylor and Lee Palmer decided to write a grant so that those that were interested here could get trained. And the thing that was so amazing is when I met Dr. Martin, and that was in the summer of this year, she's like, oh, there's a group of people from CAPT and go into a training, and we're sending 11 people to Seattle, Washington.

I was like, 11 people to Seattle? I'm like, well, I hope this is going to make a significant difference. And boy, has it made a significant difference. The teachers here are now teaching, and across the board, not just those 11, those 11 have come back and inspired those in their grade level, and every morning, except in third grade, it happens a little later in the day, our entire school starts with character strong lessons that the teachers are leading.

So the teachers in the building are now doing the Tier 1 instruction, which has now allowed us to kind of align some of the way that Crystal's Day is impacted. So we can now officially say that we have Tier 1 SEL happening here at Captain. We have Tier 2 SEL happening and now Tier 3, which is just simply amazing. But it's all based on the motivation that's taking place from these ladies.

And they have worked tirelessly all year, but starting on one of our PD days on September 20th, the teachers were given a survey to start to kind of identify kids where they saw a need. Also, the kids were given a survey. So now we have real data to work with, and that's the powerful tool here is that we have the data to work with. And these ladies, between the three of them, have synthesized all the data.

They have now brought grade-level teams in, and we've had grade-level, this is the exciting part, grade-level, like PLC, SEL data meetings. And starting next week, we have now identified our greatest need for Tier 2 interventions and Tier 3. And these aren't academic interventions. These are interventions to meet their social and emotional needs.

And groups will be forming next week. And the teachers have, without hesitation, found time within their day so that Crystal and Katie can work with these kiddos. And it is just, I have just watched it unfold with amazement. And everybody's flexibility and I really could be saying everybody here at Captain could be recognized tonight, but these three ladies took all of the data and in less than a month transformed it into the greatest need here at Captain.

And it's, yeah, and her tech skills. And I'm just here to say, wow. So thank you for your time, but it's been amazing. Thank you for sharing that, Lisa.

That's really exciting. Thank you again for sharing, Thank you for sharing that. Great news. I'd love to hear that stuff.

Okay. Agenda item three is public comment. We have a few. When I call your name, if you could just come up to the microphone where Lisa was just speaking, that would be great.

Just a reminder that individuals have three minutes to speak and that we don't respond to public comment here in the moment. You will get a follow-up from us, but I never want anyone to think There were ignoring you or not responding for another reason. That's just our practice. So first I would like to call up Charles Caffrey please Thank you I go here right Okay.

Okay. Good evening, members of the Clayton School Board. Thank you for your time. My name is Charlie Caffrey, and I'm an emergency medicine physician at Mercy Hospital in St.

Louis. I'm a Clayton resident and parent of two children in Captain Elementary. I'm here tonight to voice Thank you. We've had times where an entire unit must be dedicated to treating and boarding pediatric patients with psychiatric needs.

Too many of these young patients are struggling under the weight of excessive social media use with phones that amplify feelings of isolation, inadequacy, and hopelessness. The explosion of mental health crisis cases has come hand in hand with the proliferation of social media among our youth. A particularly troubling trend is what is almost like a digital PTSD. Students are presenting with severe mental health crises, such as suicidal thoughts and even suicidal attempts over everyday challenges, not performing well on a test, breaking up with a partner, or even having their phone taken away.

These should be normal, manageable events, but excessive phone use and digital amplification of these events' negative effects is eroding resilience, making these experiences feel catastrophic. In severe cases, we're seeing almost a dependency on devices that resembles chemical addiction. We've had to sedate young patients just to separate them from their phones as they show classic signs of addiction like agitation, anxiety, and distress upon loss of their devices. The U.S.

Surgeon General has called on schools to address youth mental health challenges. As one of the strongest school districts in the state, and probably the nation, Clayton has an opportunity to lead by example. Thank you. We urge you to take this step for the well-being of our children and for the future of our community.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, Jenna Schomburg, please. Hi.

I know you've tabled the cell phone policy change until spring after future survey responses will be gathered. Since I have a senior, I'm not confident I'll be able to comment then, and I'd like the board to keep two things in mind. First, I'm asking that you keep distinct terms in this discussion. Conflating cell phone and social media usage is problematic.

If a point made clearly is not compelling, then it is not a compelling point. Conflating terms may make for a more compelling position, but it's a reckless way to approach policymaking. Second, while I don't agree with some of my friends in the community and on the school board when it comes to a cell phone ban in the high school, I'm here tonight because I care even more about the way that policies are made. Using logic and expert opinions alone is dangerous in policymaking as it opens the door to a future similarly data-devoid position.

Expert opinions should be heeded to the corresponding degree that they use relevant data. I worked hard to find data that substantiates the claim that students who have access to cell phones are at a greater physical risk during a school shooting. This logical justification for banning was touted by board members repeatedly last meeting, and I heard it first during the school board campaigning. In fact, I repeated it myself to my children as a way of placating their pushback when I mentioned a cell phone ban.

Importantly, this factoid is the easiest way to silence parental pushback to cell phone bans, as the data suggests many parents only want their kids to have cell phones in schools because of the risk of school violence. So by telling parents that cell phone access will make their kids less safe, parental pushback is neutralized. Despite trying to find numbers that substantiate this very specific claim, I can't find them. So, to me, that means one of two things.

Superroportionate, either the data doesn't support this specific claim or the experts don't consider Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is Joy Stark.

Hi, my name is Joy Stark. I'm a parent to two children at Merrimack Elementary. I've been a pediatric nurse for over 24 years, of which I've practiced as a pediatric nurse practitioner for 12 years. I am currently employed at the Trudy Bush Valentine School of Nursing at St.

Louis University as a nursing professor where my focus in teaching and research is child health nursing, human growth and development, and attachment issues in children. I am a PhD candidate at St. Louis University and a Jonas Scholar, one of 63 elite nursing doctoral students nationwide. I'm here tonight to voice my concerns about allowing cell phone use during the school day.

Adolescence and childhood are critical stages in brain development. The school-aged child is conquering industry and the adolescence is searching for identity. The U.S. Surgeon General has issued an advisory about the detrimental effects that social media has on youth's mental health.

By allowing cell phone use during school hours, we are not advocating for our children. There is a mental health crisis within the United States with anxiety and depression on the rise. Research shows that individuals who have anxiety and depression have increased cell phone use. Approximately 95% of adolescents who have cell phones have smart phones.

By allowing our children to have access to these cell phones that have social media apps, we are feeding into the addiction of social media and the epidemic of the mental health care crisis within the United States. Social media may be associated with increased multitasking. This multitasking has been linked with negative cognitive and mental health outcomes. These negative outcomes include a poor attention span, poor academic performance, decreased well-being, and higher levels of depression and anxiety.

Research has shown that increased cell phone use leads to addiction. This addiction then adds to distractibility and decreased engagement. The purpose of our schools is for our children to attend school to develop the cognitive and psychosocial skills necessary to become productive members of society. The use of cell phones limits their ability to be actively engaged to develop these lifelong skills.

The Clayton School District's strategic profile of the Clayton graduate is not in alignment with allowing cell phones at school. The profile they want them to have has the following attributes. Self-actualization, which involves health practices and relationships. Cell phone use does not promote this philosophy of self-actualization.

Intellectual curiosity. They will not develop their crucial thinking skills and analytical skills that drives the natural inquiry of seeking to gain more knowledge and ask more questions. Culturally conscious, they cannot be conscious and aware if they are distracted by cell phone use. Empathy, cell phone use during school does not allow children to develop social skills that are essential to develop empathy.

Without empathy, they will live in an egocentric world which limits their ability to develop healthy relationships. Creative thinker. They have immediate access to a cell phone with all the knowledge handed to them by AI. They will lack these essential skills to think creatively on their own or collaborating with classmates to develop problem-based solutions through design, art, writing, and speaking.

Thank you And sent to you via email Thank you Thanks Yeah, if you could leave it, would you leave it on the table? Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you.

Next, Olivia Beinfeld. Thank you. Just, like, an issue that I've been, just has been, like, crossing my mind, like, ever since, like, I've been at Clayton Schools is, like, like, fresh, like, healthy food for lunch. Like, obviously, the food, like, isn't bad, but, like, I think we could, like, benefit from healthier lunches.

Lunches. So I think like, like, my, my idea is that nutritious meals help with better learning. And I think students could benefit from that. And like teaching, especially younger kids, because I've been in clay in school for like, Seven years, and since I was like six when I was started going to captain, like, so, and I think it would help develop healthy learning habits to have, like, community grown vegetables and fruits.

Thank you, Olivia. Okay, Mary Choquette, Anna Ives, and Genevieve Caffrey, please. Hello, everyone. I'm Mary Choquette.

Thank you so much for your service to our community. Today, we are here as representatives of almost 1,000 Clayton parents and community members Thank you. Sperintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. The core issue, students' physical access to phones in school, remains unaddressed.

Today, we want to strongly advocate that before discussing or voting on this issue, you take a more comprehensive and careful look at the district's own survey data. Upon a close examination of the survey results, it is clear that the data that was presented to you this month at the last board meeting was cherry-picked to avoid having to take real, comprehensive action on this issue. To help everyone read and analyze the data, we have created some pie charts of the aggregated data, which was provided to us by the district, and they are available in these packets and also electronically, if you would like them. First we would like you to focus your attention on the teacher responses Question 11 shows that 96 of Clayton educators say cell phones in schools have a negative or neutral impact on student learning and behavior.

I think the teacher data is in the very back. I don't think we put it together in the right order. Question 11 on the teacher responses. It shows that 96.5 of Clayton educators say cell phones in school have a negative or neutral impact on student learning and behavior.

Question seven, sorry, you kind of have to flip around, shows that 65% of teacher respondents say students are using cell phones during class time frequently, most days, or occasionally, with only 35% saying rarely. This hardly aligns with the views presented at the last board meeting that phone use is Question 10 shows that only nine educators say they incorporate phones for instructional use in the classroom more than one time a week. Yet, 107 teachers, 65% of respondents, say students are using phones in class other than rarely. 75 teachers say students use phones frequently throughout class or most days during class time.

This does not align with what was presented to you last week, that phones are only being used for instructional purposes. This also indicates that most educators do not desire utilizing students' phones within their instruction. Yes. Question 8 shows that 94% of teacher respondents said cell phone access during school hours is not at all important, not so important, or somewhat important.

Only 6% of teachers said it was very important to have access to phones in school. Two of those three teachers cited emergency contact as the reason. The other teacher cited coordination of pickup plans. One of those teachers stated that if the district required Chromebooks to be used, they wouldn't need the phones at all.

Of the somewhat important responses, most are related to needing the technology for classroom use or emergency use. Anyone who claims that students need phones for emergency use must be unaware that the National School Safety Security Services has long determined that access to phones during a school emergency makes students less safe because phones distract students from staying alert and focused. They reveal student locations and overload the networks. It is unacceptable that students at the School District of Clayton, one of the best districts in the state, do not have access to reliable laptops.

Question five, cell phones should not be a backup plan for when laptops do not work. The district and the board need to do a deeper investigation into why district-owned Chromebooks, iPads, or desktop computers cannot be reliably used for learning throughout the school day. Clayton can do better. Moving on to the parent data that was collected, the survey of parents also shows that a majority of high school parents believe their children are using their phones throughout the school day.

Question five shows that 23% of high school parents said their children are using personal devices frequently throughout class. 27% said most days, but only during certain times in class. 20% said occasionally, but not every day in class. That's 70%.

Only 30% said rarely in class. Question 6 shows that 47% of high school parents say that it is not important for their children to have access to their cell phones during school hours. Only 31% say it's extremely or very important. Question 12 shows that 43% of middle school parents say that their child is using their personal device frequently in class, most days but only during certain times, or occasionally but not every day in class.

Question 13 shows that 75% of white-out parents say it is not important for their children to have access to cell phones during school hours. I'm going to move on to the student data that was collected. Question 2 is 58% of high school students say that cell phones are being used frequently throughout class most days, but only during certain times or occasionally, but not every day in class. Question five of student data says only 25% of high school students said the impact of cell phones on learning and behavior in school was positive.

75% of high school students say cell phones have a neutral, negative, or extremely negative impact on learning and behavior at school. We also ask you to think critically and ask yourselves, ask what questions were not asked on the survey that would give us better indication of how the community would feel about different solutions. The district survey failed to include any questions about the number one solution our group of concerned parents strongly advocated for at our July meeting with district leaders and our many emails to the board and administrators and on our website Superroportionate Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Spervantage, Proprietary, and Equality. Thank you.

Thank you. Only restrict phones in classrooms and not in unstructured spaces in school as well. Clayton can do better. Thank you.

Thank you. Andrew Kaikati. Did I say that right? I'm sorry.

Thanks for hearing me and thanks in advance for listening, board members and the superintendent. So I have three kids in the district, one in high school, one in middle school, one in elementary school. Aside from being a parent, I'm in my 15th year as a Ph.D. educated university professor, which gives me perspective on college students or young adults as well as I've seen the effects of phones on them firsthand.

The bottom line is that phones are distracting for every human regardless of their age. Even among adults, the best means to reduce phone distraction is to keep the phone far away from oneself. As such, I am in favor of one district-wide policy that restricts student phone usage for the entirety of the school day. More than two years ago, in August 2022, I shared a 2017 Wall Street Journal article titled, How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds, with a school administrator as I advocated for reduced student phone usage at school.

Allow me to read some excerpts from that article. Quote, Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, and a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know and then compressing them all into a single small radiant object. That is what a smartphone represents to us. No wonder we can't take our minds off it.

Because the phone is packed with so many forms of information and so many useful and entertaining functions, it acts as a supernormal stimulus, one that can hijack attention whenever it is part of our surroundings, which it always is. The irony of the smartphone is that the qualities we find most appealing, its constant connection to the net, its multiplicity of apps, its responsiveness, its portability, are the very ones that give it such sway over our minds. Phone makers like Apple and Samsung and app writers like Facebook and Google design their products to consume as much of our attention as possible during every one of our waking hours. We love our phones for good reason.

It's hard to imagine any other product that's provided so many useful functions in such a handy form. But the effects of phones persist even when we're not using the devices. As our brains grow dependent on the technology, research suggests that our intellect weakens. The integration of smartphones into daily life appears to cause a brain drain that can diminish such vital mental skills such as learning, logical reasoning, abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity.

Smartphones have become so entangled with our existence that even when we're not peering or pawing at them, they tug at our attention. So when I shared this information with the school administrator, the response entirely missed the point of the unconscious influence of phones, even when they're not being used. As they responded, thank you for sharing the research, and we are working to have the students be more responsible in regards to their use of cell phones. There's no responsible use of something that is an unconscious influence.

It doesn't work that way. I also shared with this administrator, A article titled Brain Drain, which experimentally tested the unconscious effect of phones on attention. The results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention, as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones, the mere presence of the devices reduces their available cognitive capacity. So students did worse academically when their phones were nearby.

Isn't this attentional drag which leads to poor academic performance at odds with fostering a culture that is conducive to achieving excellence via the district mission statement and profile of a graduate? This school district has a pretty high opinion of itself. It claims that it wants to move from excellent to transformational. But even in a November 2022 Globe article, a high school teacher questioned whether this district is actually trying to achieve excellence and said that in the past 10 years, it's become that we're content with being about the same as Kirkwood.

Nothing wrong with Kirkwood, but just we're not aiming to be the best. We're not aiming to be excellent. We're about the same, and that's good enough. That's what I've seen over the last 10 years is a shift toward good enough.

So I think that this district should move beyond complacency and truly address what is going on and what is wrong. And I have to say, as a human subject researcher, as somebody who collects data firsthand and analyzes and reports it, the way that the data were presented at the last meeting is highly offensive. The subset of data that were cherry-picked out, as it was just highlighted by some other people who presented, is a really, really wrong way to do things Thank you very much. Thank you.

Blake Williamson. Hello. Thank you so much for your time today. First and foremost, thank you.

I know you guys have jobs outside of this, and this is also an additional duty, so I appreciate your time for hearing me out. My wife and I, my wife Stacy, we moved here about a few years ago from Oregon. We got twin first graders in Merrimack who are loving life. And we have 4K who can't wait to get there.

So we're really excited about that. I was able to attend the first meeting in the spring, but I read Anxious Generation. I've read a number of different books on it since. My wife has since read it.

She's a physician assistant. I work in technology and risk management fields. Spererntendent, gather data, try to make an informed decision. I was really surprised to arrive at indecision as the decision.

Even in my outreach before this meeting, I got a kind reply back from the board. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. The data, right? You have compelling points on both sides of the argument.

But if we take it from a scenario standpoint, to think what's the risk of decision, right, to ban electronics and smart devices in the school, and what's the risk of indecision? I think that's an important kind of thought exercise that, you know, in light of all the data people presented, would be really helpful to hear some reflections from the board at a later date. You know, my wife and I, honestly, after having talked through that sort of scenario-based Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Social-emotional wellness, it's very surprising that this is really a big topic we have to revisit.

You have lots of advocacy, so if you're afraid of pushback from parents that want to be able to reach their kid every minute of the day, then I think you'll find a lot of strong advocacy, or we could at least have conversations about it to understand it. But unfortunately, I feel like the posture of the board to just say, indecision is the decision, just lacks leadership. So I really hope you'll demonstrate leadership and I thank you for your time and have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Okay superintendent communication from Dr Patel Okay thank you everyone for being here Superintendent update I always like to start off with some student celebrations First and foremost I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to recently attend the Clayton High School fall play 12 Angry Jurors and I must say it was amazing One of our newest teachers, Mallory Duncan, who is actually Clayton High School's theater director. Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality. I'm going to share a few highlights which I think are very incredible as we talk about our students not only excelling academically but also on the athletic field because all spaces are learning spaces. State championship for tennis is tomorrow.

The girls are going to try to go back to back as state champions. First round of district football versus Fort Zumwalt is tomorrow night at Clayton High School at Gayfield at 7 p.m. District's Boys Soccer Tournament. The boys entered the tournament as the number one seed and I'm going to say this, arguably the best class two school in the state.

I'm not jinxing anything. District Cross Country Meet is in Cape Girardeau. Both the boys and the girls have a chance to qualify as teams for the state meet, which is outstanding. And then finally, the boys swim and dive team looks to be in the top five at the state meet.

So again, a lot of success from this season, and it's kudos to all of the coaches that work hard to make sure that our students are successful on the field as well. Next, I wanted to really thank the board for really trying to work on increasing community engagement. We recently, the board hosted a former board member meeting breakfast where we had about 13 former board members come. We talked about the current status of the district, you know, long-range facilities plan, and then we even gave them a tour at the high school, which was very successful, and I know that they appreciated it.

So thank you to the board for working on that. Recently, also, thank you to the board for attending the MSBA conference that's annually held, MSBA being the Missouri State School Boards Association. And we always talk about always wanting to be learners, and our board members are learners as well. And all six of them attended this conference in Kansas City.

It was a great chance to, like, not only attend different sessions and learn best practices, but to collaborate with colleagues and other school board members across the state. So hopefully you guys all found something that you could take away from that. It was a great experience, so thank you for that. And then Long Range Facilities Master Plan is still continuing to work.

We're still continuing to have all the work behind this. Starting next week, we're going to start all of our building-level community forums. So you can see on the chart under November, we will start off at Captain and then at the high school, Spervantage, Poverty, and Poverty. Our presentation for tonight is from Dr.

Poole, and he's going to give us an update on our strategic goal number one, a place for everyone, and he's going to focus on three key areas, one of them being professional learning for our staff, and then the district equity walkthroughs that he has worked on last year, he and his team, and then finally the building equity reports. So with that, I am going to hand it off to Lucia for a student board update. Hello. Okay.

For student updates, so we had an SBSA meeting last Monday. We had a mini discussion. It went really well, and I'd like to report that overall things at the high school are going very well. After, I know, a little bit of the cell phones and then the attendance policy, which was discussed prior, the students are feeling much more reassured with everything.

And so overall things are good which is always really nice to say Let see Oh I like to say that since August and September has passed it easy to say that the students have now officially gotten into a real rhythm of school where it feels like just a good habit to get in the routine, wake up, have your breakfast, go to school, have an amazing day, and then come back home. And so routine is always nice. The sophomores had their sophomore challenge and the juniors had the PSAT last week. I've heard great reviews of both things.

I think a little bit more sophomore challenge I think could be classified more as fun. But for seniors, the November 1st deadlines are approaching very soon. And so I know that they're definitely working really hard, as of course our generation would say, grinding, towards our college applications. And so I know that everyone is working hard towards their future plans.

But I'd like to also say that I reached out to the building principals, and I look forward to bringing the future updates about the student voice in each school. And I'd also like to end with some shout-outs. So firstly, as mentioned, there was the fall play, which was amazing. I've heard also amazing things.

The girls' tennis team for making it to state in individuals and doubles and for having an incredible season. Overall, I would like to give a shout out to all of the fall sports teams, including, here goes the list, okay. Cross country, cheer, football, field hockey, soccer, volleyball, boys swim and dive team, softball, the girls golf team, which also made it to state. And then all of them for having an incredible season.

Being a student athlete is a really big commitment, and I would like to make sure that all of these students get the incredible recognition that they deserve. Thank you, Lucia. Lots of good stuff happening. Okay.

Dr. Poole, you would come up for the agenda item 6.1, goal one of the strategic plan update. All right. Excuse me.

Good evening. So tonight, I'm going to give an update on our strategic plan goal one. The main thing we're going to focus on are about a lot of the systems that we have built and how those systems are created to be sustainable over time and really serve as kind of our accountability in terms of really keeping equity at the forefront of what we do as a district. So I was supposed to have Dr.

Daniels, our coordinator, presenting as well, but he's on his way back from Jekyll Island with the eighth graders. So I'm rolling solo tonight. Thanks, Lou. Right, so vote one course is, oops, let me go back.

We will ensure all learners, regardless of their identity, feel safe and valued over the course of, this is now year five, and me being in my position and doing a lot of things and trying a lot of things in terms of trying to make equity a sustainable system I'm going to turn it over to Commissioner O'Connor to talk about some of the things that we're working on within the district. It's been a lot of work and trying a lot of different things, and I think we finally have a good, kind of a good landing place on where we are in terms of building those foundations for the future. Working with our equity committee, they put in a lot of work in helping build and frame the vision and help build foundations in terms of the systems that we have. All of the departments from all of our coordinators, a lot of work with the teaching and learning department in terms of helping build, you know, the metrics that we use in order to hold ourselves accountable in the name of equity.

So our three systems that we're going to focus on that I'm going to dive into and give you all an update on revolve around our professional learning and kind of the system that continues to be, you know, evolving there. We're going to be talking about our district equity walkthroughs and our building equity reports, which are new from last year and have really already proven to have a profound impact on our buildings and in terms of setting goals and building our school improvement plans. So the first part with our professional learning I think the big thing with professional learning especially how it evolved within the district is making sure that it constantly evolving and the system that we have in place gives us an opportunity for it to be an evergreen model to where it constantly meeting the needs of our faculty and our staff so that they can serve our students regardless of their identity and personal characteristics So kind of just reviewing our structure and just kind of explaining how it has evolved into this school year. If we get a new teacher within the district and they are beginning, for the first three years within the district, they have to attend quarterly professional learning.

Year one is led by me, and it kind of takes on the brand taking ownership of equity. Within that, we review our equity foundations as a district as it pertains to our educational equity policy, as it pertains to our vocabulary that we use around equity, and how we need to think of equity as it pertains to how we educate kids in the School District of Clayton. Year two really focuses on how do we find what our blind spots are and what groups, what student groups of students are affected. Dr.

Daniels leads that. He brings a good perspective in terms of really focusing on things like metacognition and our own personal worldviews and how they have an impact with how we approach our educational processes. And then this year, for the first time, and I'm really excited about this, is Robin Hogg, who's our new director of professional development, has now implemented what we call kind of our strategies and equity pedagogy year, where she brings a plethora of culturally responsive strategies and ideas for teachers to use within the classroom from a tier one approach and also giving them prime tools to have in their toolkit in order to support them. So that's kind of the first three years within the district with that professional development.

And then kind of the next stage, and this is kind of on a two-year cycle, are educators within the district that are tenured. They attend equity professional development every other year. So we're on year two of our second cycle where we choose different identities that are areas of focus that we need to grow in based on data points that we collect and based on just the student groups that we have within the district. So within these categories, we have our strategic plan experience, which hits 100% of our student population.

And a lot of those revolve around our systems that we use for accountability, EduClimber, which we use to track student experience from a data standpoint. We've been implementing multi-tiered systems of support, our MTSS system, to track our students and their progress. So there's professional development around that that can be chosen. One, that's kind of an equity crash course of that year one through year three professional development that our year one through year three teachers go through, as well as using Panorama as a tool in order to read our SEL data so that we can serve our students' SEL needs as well.

So within that strategic plan experience, teachers can choose one of those opportunities in order for them to serve the need for their professional development. We also have numerous opportunities under our multilingual student experience. Multilingual students make up 7.6% of our student population. So there are professional development opportunities around just one-on-one.

What are just some basic things and needs to know that I need to know about the multilingual student experience? For teachers a little bit more well-versed, there's a professional development opportunity with how do I take a lesson plan that I already have and, you know, give it an equity focus to where it can meet the needs of multilingual students. One of those professional development opportunities is having someone come in from the international institute to talk about what it's like for a student who is an immigrant and the different things they deal with in school. So, between international institute and multilingual specialist within the district, they run that professional development.

The other level we're in as well Spervantage, Student Experience, Parent Communication, Lessons around Lesson Planning, and How to Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. For those categories. So, after each professional learning opportunity, you know, we get a survey data from our attendees in terms of trying to see if our professional learners meeting their needs. And that's where I like that we have an evergreen model with this so that we're able to give feedback and shift accordingly to meet the needs of our educators.

So 95% of respondents agree or strongly agree they had opportunities to reflect on ways to incorporate learning into their practice and then professional learning experience was relevant to their needs and their role. And we tried, that was something we grew from in years past in trying to give multiple options so that teachers and educators can find something that appeals to them from a personal standpoint. So, next section I will jump into our district equity walkthroughs. These walkthroughs are really, this is really something I'm very, very proud of the work that we have done.

And I'm really excited to see how this continues to evolve. So our walkthroughs give a school-wide picture that's compiled from many small snapshots to measure the impact of professional learning. So pretty much the equity walkthroughs, and I know this was a challenge from the board in years prior. How do we know that we're growing within our practice?

So the walkthroughs kind of give us a snapshot in terms of with all of the professional development that we're doing, all of the culturally responsive teaching strategies and techniques that we're learning, are we seeing them actually take place within the classroom? So, good thing about these walkthroughs is it's trying to hit as many classrooms as possible to kind of give us a vision of where we are. And we did these in each building. One main thing to note is that walkthroughs are not evaluative, so we're not evaluating teachers to say, you're doing this wrong or you're doing this right.

It's more so to see, are we seeing those practices and are we seeing the evolution within their teaching strategies? So there's three categories, and under these three categories, we have five indicators that we look at. So the first one is instructional strategies, you know, those culturally responsive approaches. Are we seeing them happen?

One thing we talk about a lot is classroom culture and environment, sense of belonging. Are students in an environment where they feel like they belong so that they can learn at the maximum level? And do we see relationship building taking place within the classroom and opportunities for not only for a teacher to build relationships with their students, but also for peers to build relationships with one another. So again, we have five indicators under each of those categories.

So this is just kind of a quick metric of what, you know, our high level data. Total in the district, we had 180 classrooms. Each building had a day where we focused on walkthroughs just in that building. Folks that took part in the walkthroughs were myself, our equity coordinator, folks on the equity committee, as well as other administrators within the district.

We had kind of a three-point scale. If we went into a classroom, we either thought something was not evident, partially evident, or evident. All last year, building up to the walkthroughs, we did different training and practice to get ready for the walkthroughs, and when they happened, folks doing the observations were in teams of two. So, out of that metric with one not evident, two partially evident, and three evident, that is where we scored in each of those categories.

And they kind of serve as a baseline to give us a building point. So, since then, you know, we made some tweaks to the observations and were able to kind of say, okay, this is our starting point. How can we continue to grow each year from the numbers that we see? Thank you.

So next steps. One great thing about these, and this is kind of kudos to our building administrators, is that within their building goals and improvement plans, a lot of the data within the walkthroughs are now kind of pushing the work within their school improvement plans. And when we talk about equity being a system, being that the data that is taken from these walkthroughs is being implemented within their school improvement plan shows a lot. Also, it gives us a good metric in terms of where we need to go with professional learning.

So if we see one of the indicators that is extremely lacking, that now gives us a vision of how we need to implement that in our professional learning. We're looking at the walkthroughs to start in January this school year. So the equity committee has been looking at our form making tweaks making it you know more of you know asking ourselves the question what do we need to see better We needs to be worded better so that we can really get the best pieces of data And then one thing that I excited about that we going to start doing is with each indicator having an equity walkthrough library So when we say you know if someone scoring a three on this we can give a description of what it looks like and then also give examples as well as resources so that as teachers are trying to get better within it they now have different you know different ways of doing it Access to resources that they can use in order to grow their practice. All right.

Then the last system, which, again, we just started last year, this past school year, which I'm extremely excited about, are school equity building reports. The progress report is a long-term accountability tool to document progress toward achieving educational equity as it pertains to goal one. So within our building reports, we also have the equity walkthrough data, but our building equity reports are based on the objectives that we have under Goal 1 of the strategic plan. So pretty much what we have done within our building equity reports is take each objective and disaggregated the data by students with 504s, students who have multilingual status, free and reduced lunch, gifted status, IEP status, race and ethnicity, gender and grade level.

So, for example, one of our metrics is, metrics are sense of belonging from our panorama survey. So, we just aggregated all of that data as it pertains to those student groups. So, if we see a group that is lacking in terms of being proportionate with the rest of the, with the groups within the school, it kind of gives them a, you know, a destination to try to arrive at in terms of kind of writing that data. Data takeaways and trends for each measurement were provided to the building.

So I met with each building leadership team and went through the equity report and also gave different takeaways that I was able to see. And oftentimes that led to them wanting to dive into the data deeper, maybe just aggregated it, you know, and look for some intersectionality for them to really get into it. And the percentages right there also represent the district population. So like I said, 11.2% of our students have IEPs, 21.5% of students are considered gifted, 11% of students have 504s, 8.2% of students are on free and reduced lunch, and 7.6% of students have multilingual status.

So kind of just like the equity walkthroughs, a lot of the data within the equity reports is being used within the school building goals and improvement plans. It also has given a lot of buildings from a building standpoint a focus for professional learning and different focus areas that they are keying in on and making a part of their general practices within the building. All right. That is all.

Thank you, Dr. Poole. That was great. I'm going to open up the floor to any questions or comments from any board member for Dr.

Poole. Anyone? Go ahead, Jason. Thanks.

I really appreciate the update, first of all. So I think just year after year, a lot of good work coming out of this update. So hats off to you, Dr. Poole.

So I guess a couple questions. One is, I get that we're not going to show all the data here tonight and all that stuff from the last part, but are there any major trends that you're seeing across the district in terms of what you're coming out with the building by building data reports? Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage, Propriety, and We went through building the build-up.

Great. And then my other question was, on the three-year professional learning track when a teacher enters the district do we have any data on how the teachers view that experience Yeah guess I sort of view it like the real question is is that a differentiator for us that we can be promoting And this is really a question for Kelly, I guess, but just to put it out there. Like if this is a really cool thing, can we use this to help recruiting in the future? That's where my mind went.

Yeah, and I mean we give the general kick-up survey like we do with any professional development opportunity. But what I can say, just from my experience from working with them, especially over a three-year span, is that, you know, being that we're a district that has great retention, we don't get a huge flood of new employees every year. So oftentimes that experience is somewhat isolating if you're a new teacher. You may be a new teacher and there may only be two new teachers in your building.

But the great thing is that everybody there is coming in at the same time. So the great thing is they've kind of built almost like a sense of belonging and like a cohort kind of feel with one another. So one thing I've noticed a lot is kind of friendships and relationships being built with folks across the district that they might not normally build those relationships with. So I think one, you know, unintentional effect that's actually positive is the fact that that happens.

And a lot of them definitely say that they feel that that's a good safe space for them to kind of be, you know, be around folks who are going through the same experiences as they are. So that is kind of a data point that, you know, we probably should capture that I think would have a positive impact, especially on recruitment. That was a great question, Jason, I think. This is unique to Clayton.

Well, it's an interesting, it's a great point. This is unique to Clayton that Dr. Poole has built and developed. And we should be bragging about it.

And your answer was great, too. The unintended consequences are great. Thank you. Sorry, were you going to say something?

Oh. Let's give him a hand. Whoever wants to. I'll just say thank you for the good work you do.

So we spent a lot of time in the last year talking about special school district, and I'm just wondering if they were involved in the walkthroughs in the past year. My guess is maybe not intentionally, but are we going to intentionally include them the way we have with new onboarding for Clayton teachers and SSD teachers? Will they be invited to participate in the walkthroughs? I think that'll be an important component to make sure we're making sure those two complementary but still separate kind of plans are coming together.

So in terms of the professional development, yes, our special school district employees are included within that, within those cohorts. So that is something that is happening. In terms of the walkthroughs, the equity committee are kind of the main folks within the walkthroughs. And I try to hit as many different departments as possible within the equity committee.

I can say that Kate Pavlison probably attended all but one of the buildings. She's on the Equity Committee to kind of, you know, to give us that perspective. So you have representation from SSD on the Equity Committee? Correct.

Okay. Yes. And I also know that John Turner, our new director, will take part in a couple of them as well this year. So having that in there is definitely important.

Thanks. Hi. So as being someone, the board member who gets to sit on the committee with you, it's such an honor to be a part of this, or at least to see this. I wonder if you could, since we're talking about data a lot tonight, I wonder if you could talk with us about the equity walkthrough, that 15 to 20 minute tool that you have created, and just share with us in the community why it was created that way, how you chose 15, 20 minutes, et cetera.

Definitely. So from a lot of different folks, you know, that we study in terms of professional development, you know, Elaine Aguilar, Jim Knight, a lot of different, you know, prominent educators and talking about, you know, observations, getting the right piece of data, being able to give feedback. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Usually there's somebody that's an administrator or coordinator paired with a classroom teacher to kind of give that balance.

So as they go into the room each person is taking their own notes And then the two come together afterwards and debrief and submit the observation form collectively So if there a different point in piece where Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried And then, like I said, part of that information and that debrief session is actually done with the building administrator right after those walkthroughs have taken place. And then after we're done, we disaggregate that data and they're able to get that. First of all, I'd like to thank you a lot for your presentation. I know you mentioned that you love seeing all of these works done.

And I'd just like to say that from the student side, we love feeling it because it can truly be felt in Clayton High School. It's incredible to know that when we walk in at 8 a.m., we have such a loving and supportive environment around us that the teachers, that the staff want to make sure that we have that trusted adult in the building. And so I really wanted to thank you and assure that it is felt and it makes a big difference. So thanks.

Thanks. Thank you for saying that. Thank you. That is so wonderful to hear, obviously from the student perspective, how important that is to you and that you are feeling it.

So thank you. Dr. Poole, thank you. Your work is incredible.

It really is. I am so proud of you, your team, and us as a district for doing this work. It is this kind of thing, as Dr. Nisha Patel, very professional, has said, is the transformative type of education that we are.

Thank you. Because my colleagues asked some pretty darn good questions. My only other thought was I didn't realize that a teacher is in the room for the walkthrough. It's like they're one of the people walking through.

Is that what you said? A coordinator and a teacher? Yes. It's a teacher that's off the equity committee.

Exactly. That's incredible. I mean, I was going to ask, how do the teachers respond to these? I mean, do they receive them well?

How does that, is that, are they used to peer review? You know what? And that was a conversation that took place in a lot of the debriefs because, you know, unless you take part in like lab classroom or some other opportunities as a teacher, you don't get a chance to see other teachers actually teach. So I know that was something that was very eye-opening for them just to say, oh, wow.

Like, you know, because I think the tough part as a teacher, sometimes you don't know how good or how bad or how effective you are. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. This work's incredible. And it's been really great to watch you, Dr.

Poole, how you've kind of taken this work over the years. You know, at least that I've been here since you were hired. How you've expanded this work and how deep now it goes that the students are ultimately feeling it, which is the goal, right? Anyway, so it's great.

It's so impressive. I think to Jason's point, it's really something that we should be so proud of that's unique to Clayton and clearly is benefiting not only the students, but the teachers as well that you spoke of earlier. So thank you for what you're doing. Keep it up.

And I can't believe you went to 180 classrooms. Yeah, we had a lot. Thank you. Okay, before we start with the first policy, which is EHBA, I just wanted to tell everyone, I realized in some of the communication I've been getting about this issue that we don't do a good job of explaining maybe to the public maybe what our role is in policy and also what a first reading is of policy versus a second reading of policy.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Probably most of us didn't fully understand until we were on the board, is that we focus as a board on policy, obviously, the what and the why we do things, but we don't get involved in the how. We don't get involved in procedures and processes. We can direct Dr.

Patel, as we did, to look into things and have her indirectly then tell her administrators about things that we believe in and should be looked at, but we don't ever direct Dr. Patel or administrators how to implement the policies. So I think there's a clear distinction, and I just want everyone to kind of understand what our role is when it comes to policies. I hope that helps anyway.

That we just provide broad guidance, not specific policies or, I mean, sorry, not specific procedures or process, not how things happen. Okay, with that being said, as some background information, the first policy that we will be providing, oh, sorry, did you want to talk first? Okay, sorry, go ahead. So I just want to take this moment before we get into the policies because I do want the policy conversation to focus on the policy I do want to take this opportunity to clear up a narrative that seems to exist out in the community that we did not share all the data at the last meeting and we intentionally did not share that.

So I'm going to take us back to the board meeting that we had on October 9th, and I'm going to actually pick out some things from that presentation just to remind ourselves of what we said, and then also talk a little bit further about it. So at the very start of that presentation, we began with our slide that said, Our Thoughts Supported by Literature. That was the title of the slide. And in that, we said, we agree that personal devices can be a distraction, especially when enforcement is inconsistent and or students have ready access to personal devices.

We also stated, we agree that phone and social media are addictive. We understand there is a strong correlation between cell phone, social media use, and sleep disruption, learning disruption, and poor mental health, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide ideation. We also said that we commit to working with our staff and our families to gain a deeper understanding of the interaction between technology, social interaction, and adolescent development and wasted developing strategies for supporting the mental health of our youth. We stated that at the very start of the presentation.

And there's a slide on it, too. Then we went into the presentation and our anchor question was the one that we did put up on the slide, quantitative data, was we asked the parents and our staff this. How satisfied are you with the current cell phone expectations at Y-Down and at CHS? And we asked our students the same question.

Over 80% of our parents stated that they were either very satisfied, satisfied, or neutral. And with the follow-up survey with our staff, 98% of the staff at Wydown felt the same, and 95% of the staff at Clayton High School felt the same. That was our anchor question. Are you satisfied with our current practices at the buildings?

All of the supporting questions we did not share the data with in a graph form but we did share it through common themes If you look at the video or the YouTube meeting again starting at 1 hour and 11 minutes or 1 hour and 12 minutes we have Dr Murdoch Dr Jordan Dr Gachewski talking about yes parents did say it a distraction Yes, parents did say that there's issues on mental health. And we acknowledged that. And through that, we also said at the very end of the presentation, we talked about next steps because of the things that came up through the survey. And part of our specific next steps that we said, some of them were, consider additional programs that have mental wellness focus.

Because we do believe that. We also said we're going to continue to offer PD for teachers, just like we started this summer already around anxious generation. There was never a point, and I want to be very clear with anyone who feels this way and they feel like that's a narrative out there, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And we dig into that a little bit more.

So I, sitting here as a superintendent and knowing all the work that these administrators have done since February, March, I too find that very offensive that there's a narrative out there that we cherry-picked data. We would not do that. And we came out of the gate saying that. So I just wanted to clear that up.

And I know there's always going to be differences, opinions, and views, but I want to make sure that everybody knows that. That was never our intent, and we didn't do that. So with that said, I do feel that it is important for us to go through the policies because that was part of our next step in making sure that our policies align with our practices. And so I believe we have some recommendations.

We've sent them to MSBA. They did approve it, and now we bring it to the board for a first reading and to give us thoughts on it and have the conversation. All right. Thank you.

So first is a first reading of policy EHBA, which is titled Student Use of Personal Electronic Devices for Instructional Purposes. And we have Jeff Poles, Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Garganigo, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, and Dr. Poole, who you just heard from as well.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So EHBA, the last time, when it was originally adopted was in 2015. And so one of the components that is important to consider is the time that that happened and what might have changed since then.

And so the policy recommendations that you're seeing in front of you are a reflection of really two things. One is the current changes that would reflect current practice and also just changes in sort of usage patterns and availability of technology for personal use. And so that's what you're seeing in the changes. As Dr.

Patel mentioned, what you have in front of you has been reviewed by MSBA, so if there's any question about that, at least we've gone through that step. But this is really your chance tonight as a board to have that conversation. And for example, this is something that I would just be taking notes on, like I'm going to be listening to, in the hopes that as we go through, If the board has recommendations that you would want to make to change this as a group, then we can take that under advisement and also make those recommendations back to MSBA. This is your decision.

This is your chance to have that conversation, and we're here to listen as well. So with that, I will turn it over to the board to begin your discussion. Thanks, Jeff. I think like we did in – I just thought of this, so hopefully everybody's okay with this.

I think like we did in the last meeting, I'm going to call on everyone because I think probably everybody has something to say. I hope that's okay with the team and the board. Just to make sure that everybody's heard and that, like you said, Jeff, you get everybody's feedback on the language in this policy. I'll start with Lucia.

Do you have anything, any feedback on this policy, the EHBA? Okay. Okay, thank you. Pam.

Yes Jason I was just going to Great I have to go first I been thinking all day I should have something like really artful and intelligent prepared to say I have to tell you, I really don't. I guess I'll just say a couple things. One is to, in no particular order, just a few thoughts. One is, I really do appreciate all the work that the administration has put into getting us here to this point tonight.

This is not just an issue that's limited to School District of Clayton. This is a national issue. It's probably an international issue. And, you know, I'm and so I look forward to the conversation.

I also really appreciate all the parents who showed up tonight and who wrote us the emails, not only tonight, but all throughout the spring. I think I said I think it was a joy that like I think this group genuinely likes when people show up, even when we don't agree with what they're saying. Like, you guys, we know what it's like to tell our, you know, our family, like, hey, I got to go to this meeting tonight. So I can't be at home, and so the fact that you guys showed up, I really appreciate that.

You know, I said in June when this first came up, and Stacey asked everyone to go around and say, like, what should we look for when we go through this study? And the thing I said is, you know, we have policies on the books, we have rules on the books, and we're not totally happy with the outcome. Why is that? And my thought at the time was, is this actually a policy issue, that problem that we're trying to, to the extent that there is a problem, is that a policy problem?

And I think what has come out is that they're just, for whatever reason, you know, and we're here today and we're moving forward, there just wasn't a culture of enforcement around the rules that were on the books at the time. And what I heard a couple weeks ago is that there's a real commitment from this administration to move towards stronger instructor enforcement of those rules. And so to that extent, and look, I'm for phone-free schools, right? So, you know, I really am.

But to the extent that this administration that I believe in really is going to work hard at this, then I want to give them the space and the support to do it and let them figure out the how part. Right. And so I'm open to tweaks to what we're doing here. But and I'm also very supportive of putting this back on the agenda a year from now and getting an update.

How did this year go? What did we what did we learn? What did we get right? What didn't we get right?

And make tweaks from there. But just as sort of a grounding for me at least, you know, I'm comfortable with the direction of this policy, open to tweaks along the way, but that's sort of, I guess, where I am. Hopefully that was an okay way to start off the conversation. Yeah.

Did you have specifically in this policy any comments about the language or anything, though? Oh. Okay. I'm just, sorry.

Well, look. You can say no, because you could agree with their suggestions. I mean, I'm just. I mean, do you really just want me to spit out a couple ideas?

Well, I mean, if Jeff's taking notes on our feedback on their suggestions here, I want them to hear it. So if it were me, I would say that any device needs to be on school mode or whatever the equivalent of school mode is. I'm an Android guy, so I don't really know what happens in school mode, but it seems like sort of a basic thing that if parents can control what they want their kids to be able to do during the day, turn off the social media notifications, things like that, so that we can separate cell phones from social media use and other stuff during the day. The other thing I'd say, and I don't know, sorry, I went first.

You know, if there's this thought, and Leo and I both talked about it at the last meeting, is some level of discomfort with leaving it to teacher discretion. We're talking about CHS here. I mean, that's really what we're talking about, right? And I would be comfortable with some language around if a teacher wants to allow the use of cell phones in class, to what Kim brought up last time, like, fine, we have a history of, you know, we have a culture of allowing teachers that flexibility to decide how they want to teach, but just put it in the syllabus.

In other words, and I'm just going to make the example, and I know the photography is not a great example, but that's the one that comes to mind. I'm going to let the kids use iPhones because you got to take pictures, right? And that's the best way to take pictures. You put it on the syllabus and that seems like a non, that seems like a not, a non-burdensome way to get teachers to at least acknowledge I'm going to allow this for this purpose, right?

And so I'm open to that. I'm also open to someone saying, hey, Jason, from the life of a teacher or an administrator, let me tell you, here's what you might be missing. But I put that out there as an idea. Thanks.

Since we're skipping around now, come over here. Chris? Okay Let me take some deep breaths Sorry This is a big I feel my heart is really in this And so I just going to try to take some deep breaths while I discuss this I want to respectfully disagree with Jason on a couple different points. I do believe this is a policy issue.

For me personally, the issue I have is that it says, Superintendent in building principles to determine whether or not students are permitted to access personal electronic devices during the school day. I, the green, oh, I'm sorry. Just, yeah. The green, the first green section.

I'm sorry, guys, I should have said that. The very first green section where it says that the building is allowed, is permitted to make the decision to permit the use of cell phones. I considered, with the help of some other board members who had some great ideas, The second item is that adding the language of only during instructional time would take into account, how do I, to me it would be a first step. But I want all of you to know that I don't see myself approving any policy that either doesn't say that at least as a first step to a subsequent policy that would potentially get rid of that, much less the way it's written here.

I'm only one person. But that's where I stand on this. I know that this is going to be a hard change for our district. I know it, and so do all of you, but I know that we're all brave enough to do it, and we have ample reason to do it.

I would like to do it not just relying on, I understand Stacy's point that the board is here for policy. To me, this is directly related to specific policy. We have other functions. Our other functions is to oversee that Nisha sees our vision as a board and our strategic plan come to life in our schools.

I would say in this case that is not taking place for every reason that these parents have articulated. It doesn't make sense to me to allow students to have an addictive device even during passing period. I am a health educator by trade, and I never once gave a lecture where I said, only drink in between classes. It's a no-brainer because that's where my training is, and I understand addiction and the behaviors around it maybe better than the average person.

However, we've had a lot of very articulate experts and parents agree with that, as well as a board member who is also a psychiatrist. I also don't feel comfortable with the idea that I'm not completely confident. In fact, I would say I'm not at all confident that our kids feel safe in schools, our schools. I know that we collect data on that.

I also know that children's minds are working all the time. And in my opinion, keeping them safe and showing them the proper ways to be safe when any kind of emergency happens, tornado, et cetera, it is the absolute priority for us. And it fits with our strategic plan. So while one of our parents couldn't find data on this, many professional organizations, as experts, have said that grabbing a cell phone during an emergency of any kind puts their life in danger.

One of the reasons there may not be great data on this is because we haven't been keeping records on this yet. Can you imagine sitting down as a first grader and saying, did you see your friend who is no longer with us get on their phone or not? We're trying to figure that out. Did that happen or, we certainly Can't talk to the students who are not with us anymore.

To me, it's, there requires no data on that. We have experts who understand safety and security in the ways that we don't, you know, me included, that are clear, given their expertise, that grabbing a phone is not only dangerous to them, but to their fellow classmates, et cetera, for multiple reasons. The literature's all out there. Okay, let me see.

There's a couple other things. In my opinion, also, this is a public health crisis. And just like during COVID, we made sure to see that our classrooms were following the best data from our public health organizations, the CDC. I see this in the same way.

The Surgeon General discussing this, the rates of mental health challenges that our youth are facing, it cannot be just a parent's responsibility to make movement on something that is that dire and that is that well, it's throughout our population. It doesn't work that way. There's no, we originally, you know, nobody had to wear a seatbelt. But eventually we did, you know, all the great people that work in public health realized that that's a really, really good way to help people that are in cars survive an accident.

It really works. And in my opinion, we are already at a place where we know for sure that having access to phones, as Nisha acknowledged, is not good for our brains, especially in our youth. So for me, just relying on parents to send their student to school with a phone that's on airplane mode or not at all is not enough to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish for our students and even for our greater society, which is that they do not have any, they have six hours a day where they, We are in a place that is safe for their mind and their heart, learning in head and heart. Just every public health initiative is the community's part of it.

The school is a big part of a community. So to me, we just can't rely on the parents to be policing this completely. It won't get solved if it's just the parents that address this problem. I agree that we don't get into the how, and that's fine.

So I'm just trying to point out, maybe I already did, that this isn't to me that us getting into the how, it's us directing Nisha to ensure that our vision of the strategic plan is being followed. I want to talk about the survey for one second and say that just as I talked about in a public health viewpoint, we do things, we come up with policies that people don't like wearing their seatbelts. At first they were like, no way, and they were mad that they got a ticket for being caught without their seatbelt. That's fine.

We still did it because we knew it was safe for everyone. And some people aren't going to follow that rule. Thank you. Thank you.

I also, one last thing. It is hard for me to imagine that anyone who would have read Anxious Generation would not see how incredibly impactful it would be for our students to not just not have it out on their desk certainly to not just not have it in the classroom versus in the hallway but also to have that trigger put away so that their brain is freed up to do all the things that our strategic plane wants to accomplish The facts are there. If it's in their pocket, which it is at Y-Down, for the most, I shouldn't say for the most part, I'm sure that's happening a lot because nobody's policing whether or not they put it in their backpack. That is impacting their learning, period, end of story.

And we believe that that distraction is not okay. So let's act on that and put them in a place where students' minds will not be triggered by that addiction because they are inaccessible. Now, the how is going to be your challenge. It is not easy.

Every single enforcement procedure that you put in place will have some people that don't follow it, right? All the rules are broken. However, I was disappointed in the lack of research that was presented on the 9th. I really thought you guys would come and say, here's how many schools we talked to that have a complete ban, as in, you know, no yonder pouch and yonder pouch.

So two different ways of having a complete ban, and you would give us feedback about what you learned. And that didn't happen, and I don't believe that we could much less go to a second reading of this policy without having our administrators have told us that they have researched this thoroughly. The option of not just saying we are a phone-free school in general, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. But it also has these consequences.

I think that's all. Who wants to go next? Leo. Why do we all have these things?

That's right. They seem awful. Exactly. They are awful.

Go to policy a little bit. Because I think it tells a story that's important. Thank you. And I think that was the view at the time.

And so one of the things I said at the last meeting is I understand why educators feel whipsawed on this because they were told to bring them into the classroom. I mean, that's what people were telling them. And now it's going the other way. And that's tough.

I think it's a good thing to go through this policy and remove some of that language that no one at this table agrees with. I think that's a positive step. I don't think it makes sense to leave, when we've gone through the process of bringing it before the board, leave a policy in place that contains language that I don't think anyone at this table agrees with. And I think, so I think that would be, those are all, all the red and green changes on here are directionally right.

We could argue about whether they're sufficient. Okay. I have a, I had a couple things that I wanted to incorporate into this policy. I'm going to simplify them a little bit.

I think what, in addition to making these changes, what I would like to do is to make sure that we're able to make these changes. The main thing that I would like to see is a goal statement and a plan to come back to this issue. And that's the bottom line. Jason mentioned another idea that I put out there, which was having teachers that use it in class for a discrete purpose identify that in a writing.

That would be fine if that was incorporated, but the main thing is a goal statement. We're delegating it to the administration. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried And we have a plan to come back and ask and learn about whether it being met and how we doing on that And that what I would like to see in here is the goal statement and the plan to revisit it And I understand the plan to revisit it. I propose that as a policy revision.

But maybe that's just a conversation. I'm fine with it either way. But the point is the goal and whether it's met. Thanks.

Oh, I, I, just, the goal statement that I proposed, which could be, we could talk about exact language, was phone-free educational environment. And, you know, I'm not wedded to that exact language, but those are the words that I put out there. Oh, that's it. Should I say?

Do you want to, yeah. Oh, wait. I simplified my presentation a little bit. This is a document.

Anyone who wants to go up on YouTube and look at it, this was some suggested changes that I had, but I've simplified the way I wanted to say it tonight. Thank you. Pam? Thank you.

Thank you. There is a, one where a few parents said something in an email that we got in the last many days, and then Chris, you touched on it that I want to point out. That our school district is the heart and soul of this community, of the Clayton community. And we need, as board members and as administration, to hold that ever present.

I am, I'll just take your line, I am for phone-free schools. How we get there is debatable. How much impact we as a board have into that, I'm still trying to figure that out as a new board member, and I'm struggling to figure that out. So I'm going to put that out there too.

There is a really important piece that has not been said tonight, I think. But if you've read the books and the literature, you will see that one parent putting their kid's phone on school mode or locking it up or whatever it is, one parent does not make a difference in our school community. I don't know for sure, but I think many of us want a phone-free educational environment. I hope that that phrase makes it into the policy, onto our next reading.

Phone-free educational environment, like I believe is on Leo's slide. How do we get there is the really important piece. And how do we do that together as a board and as an administration to make this work? One of the things that came up a lot around the board at the October 9th meeting was Clayton is an amazing school district.

Clayton is unique. We have open campus. Look, I'm a second generation Clayton student. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

For their academic needs, their academic growth, and their social emotional growth and safety. We've talked a lot in the equity presentation about a sense of belonging and how important that is here in Clayton. If I read our panorama data correctly, and I'm not quite sure if I'm looking at the right information, But I think our sense of belonging at the high school and the middle school are our lowest scores of all of the things Melaina if I am wrong please tell me and send me the appropriate information But that's what I could find. If that's the case, we have something important to do.

And how can we tackle that? I'm ready to do that. I am just putting it out there that I'm struggling with how to do that. Okay, did I say the thing about all students?

But none of this matters, right? None of this matters. Okay, our principals presented to us on October 9th that the practices have changed. We know the practice has changed this year.

They presented to us that it's been great. Or, you know, it has been, I will say, a lot better than it was in years prior. And it's not enough. The other thing that was clear in your presentation to us is that there should be different hows at the middle school, at each of the levels.

There should be different approaches. Do those different approaches go in our policy? Again, I don't know. But it seems like something like that should.

I see you shaking your head no. But I don't know. So, right now, what we have, the rules that we have, or the practices, I'm sorry, that we have, they're not quite enforceable. We have students reporting to us that they are being found, like used in the middle school and in the high school.

They're being, I mean, I got the data today from our principals. Now I can't find it, but of the number of confiscations of phones that have happened in the last three weeks since October 9th, high school, only four since October 9th, all first-time offenders, no repeat offenders. Superroportion of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. What teachers in the high school are doing that I, granted, this is report from students, so we'll take this with a grain of salt, but the teachers are not taking it at the high school.

They're saying, here's your warning. If I see it again in this class, then I'm going to take it. That's not our policy. That is not consistent with the practice.

So the how isn't happening. I think that's what I mean. The how isn't happening. And so how can we, as a board, support our administration, Superroportionate, and support our teachers to take the policing of cell phones away from our teachers so that our teachers can focus on teaching, on lesson planning, on collaborating with each other, and on connecting with our students.

Because this isn't, it's not okay. Okay. I'm going to go back to, in terms of, I will pivot to specific language. I want a mission statement, like Leo said, with phone-free educational environment.

I would like more, so I would like phone-free schools, but I'm not sure how realistic that is. And I do want two other things. One is I want it here, I want it in the policy that teachers cannot just say, okay, class is done, take out your phones. Or let's all take out our phones to record a physics lab because there are very few examples.

There's few exceptions and those are the exceptions. I want us to talk about the rules and that's what should be in the policy. And then the next part, which probably is not in the policy, but I want an agreement that we will review this in the spring. And whether we review that in the spring with another survey of who, I'm not sure, or we just review it with our administration and see what they think is happening, I'm not quite sure.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Kim. Okay. So, again, I think there's an important distinction here that needs to be made for the board's collective understanding as well as the public's understanding of the difference between the policies that the board sets Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Toward the high school, the rule in the high school is different. Phones, according to the current practices that are being observed today at the high school, are that they're not allowed during instructional time within the classroom. They are allowed during passing periods, and they are allowed during greyhound time free periods when it's an open campus, so as you leave the school.

Thank you. So that is not, you know, with over 800 students in the high school, I would say, from my perspective, dealing from a fact-based place of at least the data that's being collected, not on the information maybe that parents are hearing from their kids at home, during carpools, that I guess I fail to see where there's a problem. That is not being solved by the practices at the building level that currently exist if they are being enforced. If that is not the case, and that's, you know, I think that as a board we would want to see the building level principals deal with that, Nisha then deal with the building level principals if there's a failure to address those issues.

And then if that case, if there's a failure at that level, that's at the point where it comes to us at the board to do something different about it. From a policy perspective, this is old, which is why it's so marked up, right? And I agree with Leo that we need to make these changes. And I would say that collectively as board members, there's nobody on this table that disagrees with the fact that phones do not belong in the classroom.

We all agree that phones do not belong in the classroom. I think that was very clear during the last meeting that we had. I don't know how anybody could have a different takeaway than that. How we go about making sure that they are not in the classroom, I guess I want to trust that the information that we have received from the teachers, from the building level principals, and from the superintendent is correct.

And I don't believe that there's been any deliberate attempt to obscure information or hide information from us. And again, I have been in the schools and seen with my own eyes for myself, and there's not an epidemic of phones out everywhere, at least not that I can see. All of us as board members have the opportunity to tour schools. We have all been in the schools.

If you have seen something different, then you should speak up. So going to the policy, I mean, I generally accept the changes that are here. I think what's helpful, though, the next time that this policy, if we have a second reading of this policy after we, are we going to do what we normally do with policy which is go through this and go through the highlighted changes If we have a second reading of this policy I think it would be useful at that time to because for the benefit of the public at large and also the board members at this table, to look at the rules or the practices that are in writing at each of the building or at each of the levels. There is a rule that is written for the high school.

We should look at that. We have looked at it. We have not reviewed it in public. There's a rule that is written for the middle school.

We should look at that in public. There's a rule that's written for the elementary schools. We should look at that. So that's it.

I mean, I'm ready to review policy if everybody's ready to review policy. Yeah. The few things that I would add to that is what you just said about reviewing each of the school practices in public. I do want to be careful that if we're reviewing them, it's just presenting them for informational purposes.

We as a board will not and should not have input into that at all. Just real quickly, that was part of the presentation on October 9th. It was. I'm not so sure.

Yeah. Oh, okay, good. So all of our fans at home can go back and watch that video. Right, that's true.

So we have done that. Okay. I hope this goes without saying, but like everyone else, I agree with pieces of what everyone has said here, and generally agree with what everyone has said here, that I too do, I agree that phones do not belong in classrooms. I'm also a former high school teacher.

I feel very strongly about that. But I also feel strongly that I want to be careful that we are not putting too much emphasis on anecdotal data at all. So I know we're all hearing things and we're getting emails that their kids saw this and their kids saw that. And what I've told every parent that tells me that is that your kids need to tell their teacher, just like if they see anyone breaking any kind of rule at school, right?

Or a parent could call the principal or a teacher. So I do want to be careful about leaning too heavily on that. The reason, Pam, I was shaking my head at you when you were saying different rules for different levels, wasn't because I don't agree with you. It was actually I do agree with you.

But what I was thinking of is that it's actually already kind of written in this policy, basically, that we're authorizing building principles to, how is it worded, basically to create their own, when they're permitted access or not. So I kind of felt like that's the way of saying, you know, each different level will determine that. I like the phrase phone-free educational environment. I think that kind of encompasses what we're talking about.

We might, though, need to define, you know, what is an educational environment? Is that just in the classroom? If that's in the entire building, you know, that's not a practice at the high school. But it sounds good, Leah, but I don't disagree with that.

I think adding during instructional time is, you know, to me is like a no-brainer thing to say. I also agree, and I even suggested this at the last meeting, that we should revisit this in the spring. That just like Pam was talking about the data that we got even just since our last meeting discipline data, I would love to see that this spring. I think, and I do agree, this is a policy that we should review annually.

I don't know that we need to put that in policy, but I think we could put it into practice. I think that... Can I just... Yeah.

How would that be memorialized? I'm fine with it not being in policy. So, memorialized, that's a good question. I mean, I guess I'm just...

I sound like a liar, but... I guess I'm just keeping in my head, and Nisha's probably taking the note too, that when we meet to plan the year-long agenda, that... I mean, I know I will. Memorialized after me or after Dr.

Patel? That is a good question. I got it. But I know, like I said, even on October 9th, it would be a priority for me.

I would for sure want to add that in the agenda. And I suppose the other thing I'd say is, I mean, I don't think this is going to necessarily be an annual issue forever. So at each meeting, the board can talk about what the next review would be. Right, right.

That's a good, yeah. And procedurally, I mean, a board member can. Well, elected any time during our meetings for an agenda item to be added as a topic. That's true.

That's true, too. So if you find that it's not there and you want to see it there, you can always ask that it be added. That's true. Okay if we wanted to I think Kim said you had comments on the policy language that we want to get into right Was it you that just said that Well I think you should review the policy Right You should review the policy Right I just didn know if you had something specific Yes So as we always do, like we said, this is a first reading.

We're providing input on the language. So I will just open this part up to the board, Kim or whoever else, or if Dr. Garganego or Mr. Poles or Dr.

Poole have anything they want to say. To explain the changes or, you know, to open it up. Sorry, before you hand it over to the panel. Yeah.

Policy is our job. We are looking at policy tonight. Absolutely, that's what we are here to do. We are also here to make sure that the public good of our citizens, especially our students, is our number one priority.

Nisha says it every time she talks on everything. That's not what's happening here in my opinion, not just opinion, but according to the science. So that's why I'm bringing up public health right now. Policy doesn't exist in a vacuum.

So, Chris, do you have suggestions of how we can incorporate that into this policy if you don't see it reflected here? Well, to me, this policy would just need to take away the access to phones in schools, period. That's how that would literally take care of that problem. So would you direct parents not to send their kids to school with phones?

I would certainly educate parents that it would be best if they didn't. However, that's not a realistic way of policing this problem. It takes everyone, the entire community, to be on board, including us, to police this problem. So from a practical standpoint, how would, I hear what you're saying.

I have four administrators to figure out. They should have come to us on the 9th and said, here's why this can or can't work, and here's what we're questioning, and we're not sure. But we talked to this school. I've watched several news reports on schools around the country that are using yonder pouches and have great things to say about them.

But I didn't, you guys didn't go talk to those folks. So we can't sit here at this table and say that our administrators did their adequate research for us to know whether. So, a more restrictive practice would benefit, and not just benefit, but could be how it can be accomplished. I think I said that in June 5th.

I said, and tell me how that's enforceable. So, maybe Yonder practices in some schools are just a disaster, and they're not enforceable at all. Spervantage, Pursuit, and Please fill it out. For some reason, these schools are hesitating on sharing the information, but the ones that they did, we absolutely provided.

Okay, I really appreciate that, and I do remember you doing that. It was, right. Keep going. No.

I have a hard time believing that you couldn't have found schools to respond to this, period. I know you tried, but given that you just type into Google news stories about yonder pouches, and you can find them, And in every single one of those that I've watched, maybe there's some that are like, I hated it for our school, but I've seen principal after principal say how incredible it is for their school. That they now have a school that not only feels like a place of belonging, but where the kids are academically more engaged than they've ever seen the students. So I'm positive, I'm positive you guys could have called a principal that had worked with Yonder Pouches.

I'm positive. Without maybe just sort of randomly putting out there, hey, what do you guys think? Instead, actually finding the schools that use them and calling them up. I guarantee that they'd be willing to talk to you about it.

Well, okay, what I'll say to that is I, kind of like Dr. Patel said, we saw results from 18 area schools and districts. Some of them had to be, I think, reminded like five or six times to answer us. Correct.

It was like, or more. To even answer the phone? Because did you pick up and answer, did you call on the phone? No, I don't think so.

If it's just via email, I see that being a challenge. But I'm just also cognizant of the time they're spending. If they wanted to get abroad, they got 18 area schools and districts. Even to call I just I don know So maybe Dr Garganico can speak to it more But the time that that took even to get that out of them so I don know I thinking it might have been a time issue but I don want to put like words It was also summer.

It was. I will say that I personally called schools and school boards and actually also spoke to our attorney and someone at MSBA about schools that use yonder pouches. And only, but they only knew about, I mean, this was only the St. Louis area.

Right. Exactly. I did not reach out nationally. But I will say there are a couple schools in St.

Louis County that use Yonder patches for a completely, for reasons that we do not, issues that we do not have here. And it's mostly to mitigate fights because fights are planned over phones. I also spoke to another district that had them and took them away because it was a hassle to deal with it. And that was it.

Literally, I was given the names of three districts here, like in Missouri, that used them. I didn't look beyond Missouri, so I'm willing at that. But I'm just, that was my... To me, if we know that these schools exist that are using them, whether or not they're local is irrelevant.

We need to contact them. Well, I think the reason probably they focused on local and I did too is that we're always, we know those schools better. Like, we compare ourselves to those schools in so many ways, and also a lot of those school names were brought to us by parents at the last meeting saying, look at SLU, look at LADU, look at... And I don't, we do not want to throw any of those districts under the bus.

No, yeah. But part of the reason that they are hesitant to share the information is because, well, I'm hesitating to even say it now. Yeah, that's fine. Because I don't want to throw any of them under the bus.

Yeah. But you can say a lot in your marketing materials and on your website, but in reality. Correct. That's not what's happening in their schools.

Because enforcement of these. I've called several school, I'm trying not to argue with you, I'm just telling you what I've done. Several school board presidents in a lot of these districts too. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I want to go back to where we were a moment ago when Kim was speaking and then Chris was speaking. And Kim was saying, we need to, like, write this policy. We need to edit policy. And Chris is saying, well, that's, I'm going to do my best to summarize what I think you said.

That's hard to do when I don't agree with it. And so I'm going to put on my learner hat right now and say, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. I want those to be added in there.

And smartwatches. There are things that have already been made that are changes here that we all have broad agreement on. I anticipate based on the discussions that have already occurred at this table tonight and the last meeting. I think I would recommend that we advance the policy with those changes that we know can be made now.

I mean, otherwise, how do you advance anything at all? We just come to a standstill and decide to do nothing? That's the inaction that we heard from a community member that's really kind of unacceptable, right? You stand still and nothing happens.

So let's move forward with what we know we can make the changes to. We can come and ask for a second reading. We can ask if we feel it's necessary for the administration to go out and seek additional data before the next reading. If there's additional things, Chris, you need to think about that need to be articulated here which you can't articulate tonight.

And then we do the second reading. I totally hear you. Like, there's some really obvious things that we hopefully all agree on, like pagers. And that is, I think it's debatable whether that is advancing the issue like what was brought up by the parent or the speaker.

I think that the editing that we can do of this policy is not advancing the issue. It is updating something from nine years ago. It's like making up for what hasn't been done for nine years. I don't think editing this in something easily agreed upon by all of us, I want to make clear, is not advancing.

It's catching up to where we are right now. Okay, but would you also agree that the practices that we're seeing this semester versus second semester of last year, based on the attention that this board and administration and the community has called that we have focus on, has resulted in improvements? I think we heard that from Lucia. I think we heard that from...

Yes, I'm not debating that this is not an improvement, but that's not what's in this policy, right? What we are going to do theoretically tonight is catch up. We are not making new policy to advance. Even with the new practices in place and we write a policy that matches that or supports that, it's still catching up.

But shouldn't our policy support the current practices? So, shouldn't that be what we focus on then? Yeah. What I'd say, we have a plan to revisit this.

We don't need to delay a second read of this or whatever the idea is to revisit it. Right. We'll come back to it. We'll evaluate it.

I hope that, you know, the data comes with it and we can make a decision then. But I don't see any reason we would leave in place a policy that encourages teachers to bring phones into their lesson plans. It should not be the policy of the Clayton School District to encourage that. That's what this says currently.

And that's not, that's just an old, out-of-date idea. And so we should do that. I am in favor, as I said before, of putting a top line goal in here that will inform our discussion in the spring. But policy, the red and the green on this policy are improvements.

And we should always take improvements when we get the chance to vote on them. So, okay. So I have a question back to you, Leo. So policies don't usually have goals, Leo, sorry, sorry, I just had a question for you.

Policies don't usually have goals, right? So I'm just curious how, what your suggested wording for that would be and is the first sentence, you know, or would it just be the first sentence or what would it say? Well, I mean, we could toss up my markup again. I guess all kinds of things happen in policies.

I think I've seen goals in policies. I've certainly seen goals in contracts and other legal writings. I don't think it's all that difficult a concept. It just helps the people who are reading and implementing the policy understand the intention of which it was enacted, and they have that in their mind.

Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Before definition. Right. Okay.

So that was a proposal that incorporated a goal. I'm a lawyer, so I draft. But no pride of authorship. No, I mean, I'm fine with having a goal.

I think it's right there. It says the goal of the policy is to create the extent bracketable, and that would be Thank you The purpose here that the purpose And you know we had some back and forth about whether it should be broadened to include some other personal electronic devices That fine And, you know, that's just my idea. I'm just one board member. But if it's ‑‑ I think if the board ‑‑ Wait, did Lucia want to say something?

Sorry. Yes, please. I'd like to, like, definitely the policy idea is a good idea. But if still it can't be like implemented in a way in the policy, I really liked what you said about the mission statement.

Because like from the student perspective, like when you tell a student like, oh, hey, like there might be this policy that might take your phone away. Like I don't know if I really want to say fear, but like maybe that might be what they're saying. They might also think it's coming out of the blue. So I think that the idea of a mission statement, at least to ensure clear communication with the students about the reason why, Which then, like, that might tie into the idea of the goal, like, what we are doing for the district might be really good to, like, communicate with the students because kind of what I've been taking a little bit of notes, but, like, what I've divided it by the two is there's this idea that phones are, of course, negatively impacted in students' life, especially because of social media.

And then there's the problem of distraction in the classroom with what Ms. Hurst has said is really like resolved. So students, like they feel in the classroom, phones aren't really a distraction. We are focused in class.

We feel that we don't have it. So the current policy is working. But then if a policy is with the intention of, for example, the idea of autonomy and then public health, then that's also a different topic if we're talking about social media and how that affects student wellness. So I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I've done such a great job of kind of separating the two from classroom to actual mental health and wellness.

But I just think that I believe that it really, I think some students would really like also just the communication to also know the distinction between the two. So I think that the idea, I really like the idea of a mission statement to be able to like communicate and so that they can know and so that like they can also tell me and I can communicate. Are you referring to like what Jason said about teachers putting in a syllabus? Or do you mean in this policy?

Also, in the syllabus, I'm not sure if I heard this correctly. I think someone may have said that it might not be possible to add like a goal into a policy. Thank you. Thank you, Lucia.

I want to go back to your question, Pam. When you were saying you want to put on your learner hat, and we're sitting at this table and you're seeing that for this particular policy, there's some differences of opinion about what should or shouldn't be in the policy, and that's not something you have witnessed yet. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you You know no one here has agreed and has directed you know our administrators to take out that line I am the only one, and that is the way it works on a board, and I'm happy to be one of six, hopefully seven soon.

So, Chris, it's to determine whether or not students are permitted access to personal electronic devices during the school day is the language. Correct. So that language is what I want to be removed because it puts, it allows the principals. Will you tell us which sentence that is again?

It's the third line beginning with determine. So the second sentence, start at the second sentence. I see it. The board authorizes the superintendent and building principals right there.

The board, in my opinion, does not give any authorization to the superintendent or building principals to determine whether or not there are cell phones in our schools, instructional time and non-instructional time. So it's, we're talking about the high school. We're talking about all the schools. One policy.

I understand, but the piece of it that's most directly affected is along the lines of the question that I asked at the last meeting. What about pushing the no cell phone rule out to the school door at the high school? Right? What did you say?

Say it again? What about pushing the no cell phone rule out to the school door, out to the front door at the high school? That's kind of the... Are you saying a green zone thing?

But that's not policy. That's a practice that Dr. Kachisky chooses for his school. I understand.

I'm just trying to, policy is rewriting that sentence. The practical thing that's at stake. I see what you're saying. The students there would actually already do that because they could decide as Brethren principals.

They could. Yeah. But you would not permit them to allow it in the non-instructional parts of the high school. Correct.

Is the operative piece. Correct. That's what's affected by that change in wording. No, that doesn't mean we can't.

I mean, we... Can we go through this part that Leo has been projected and say, can we agree to that? Should we like to see that in a second? I'm so sorry, that we would like to see that in a second reading.

Can we do that and discuss that? I would like to see it as Leo has it. So a couple of things that I may ask. If this is the direction we're going, We will need direction from the board on the definition of educational environment.

And perhaps instead of gold, you put purpose. Purpose is fine. Purpose is fine, absolutely. I'd also add, just to keep it consistent with the rest of the policy, phone-free probably needs to be broadened.

Because now you're dealing with Apple Watches and... Well, AirPods. AirPods. But not...

Whatever they create three years from now. But not personal laptops that are used. You have to exclude those. From a practical perspective, that's not excluded from this, even in the original policy, and it probably needs to be because we allow students to bring in their personal laptops.

And a thing about the AirPods, too, like if they can be used, because students, of course, can use it for music, but then there's also the fact that they serve Thank you. I that concerns me because if we are asking teachers to provide written lesson plans for approval from their building principal that A a lot of work and B I think sends a message that we don trust our teachers And I am very concerned about that Providing lesson plans to be approved by your boss is a very antiquated way for administrators to run their schools. I did that 25 years ago, and it, sorry, I don't mean to make it about me, but that's not a current practice that principals, I don't think, institute, and I know that we don't. So I think, though, Jason's suggestion could take the place of that by making mention in a syllabus, not in our policy, but making a statement, like Jason said.

I forgot what you called it. Yeah, but you called the statement something. Just a disclosure or something. Yeah, okay.

You can call it whatever you want, you know. The teacher would put in their syllabus that everyone would see at the beginning of the year, that they may use, however they would word it. But I would not vote for a policy that had that phrase in it. The phrase previously approved.

Previously approved written instructional plan. Will we, a syllabus is a written instructional plan. To me, I mean, we could put in previously approved syllabus. Not previously approved, I'm sorry, written instructional plan.

We could put in syllabus. Let me ask a question. But that's very specific. What is the, what's the intention behind a written instructional plan?

As I understood it, the intention behind that is sort of twofold. One, not at all to put extra work on Dan. Not at all to put extra work on teachers, but for it to be intentional when phones are used by teachers, make that an intentional part of their teaching. And there was something else.

Oh, I think also it would, if it was reviewed somehow, it would also allow the building principals to see, like, where do teachers want to use phones? Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. That is an opt-in, you know, type of, you know. Is that not obvious?

But I think what Leo was saying was that this is an acceptable, you know, alternative, you know, compromise, whatever you want to call it. I think that's where Leo was going. I would accept the revision. Yeah.

Removing the words previously approved. I would. I'm not speaking for anyone else. I would accept the removal of the words previously approved.

And I would accept substitute words for written instructional plan if you don't like those particular words. The intention is a writing. Because the idea is that... Sorry.

Oh, right. So maybe what might cover that better would be that teachers who may or may incorporate personal electronic devices into their classrooms Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I don't expect that, right?

I mean, Pam's point. Oh, the who's crossed out. The who is blanked. The reason that I simplified my presentation at the beginning is because I wasn't gonna get hung up on this revision.

I have to be honest, I don't like really even mentioning teachers in a district policy because I feel like we said, the superintendent and the building principals They're the ones that are going to manage their teachers. That's the way it says teachers may incorporate, but not with any, the black is what is suggested, right? Into their classrooms shall, with the assistance of the principal or the dean. You're right.

I apologize. Teachers may incorporate. Teachers may incorporate. Well, you have a good point.

I'm trying to think of how else to say that. Pam, you have a good point. Do you have an idea, Elena? So if you don't like teachers, it's already there.

You want to take it out, maybe. In terms of us directing what teachers do, I guess. Right. But that is already in the policy.

That's already in there. Can I make a comment? So I've just been taking notes. As I said, I would.

And this component, I'm getting a little confused Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. To predicate that, to go back one layer, we'd also say that if the, you know, it's sort of like a de facto issue, if the principal has disallowed the use of personal technology devices in the building, then they're also, they have the ability to disallow it for instructional reasons as well. And so, to me, when I read it from that angle to say if the principal or designee has made the decision about the rules, then they've also been able to make that rule about whether or not teachers have access or should be using or should not be using that in the classroom environment.

And so I think as I read it sequentially, it makes that connection for me whenever I think about it from that perspective. The principal makes the decision. That decision includes things about what teachers can and cannot do in the classroom. So this is just the thinking that was done around that line, and especially that piece about not penalizing anyone.

Yeah, and I love that we have that line in there, because we have brought up equity concerns before. So thank you for bringing us back to your proposed changes in this as well. So I have an idea. Maybe.

To get back to the intention of the sentence, which was the equity piece, what about if we just take out teachers who incorporate blah, blah, blah with the assistance of the principal and just say, like, no student should be penalized for not having access to personal electronic devices? And accommodations will be made. Yes. What if we just skip the whole teachers who incorporate it part?

Does that, that still meets the intention of the policy? Do people agree or disagree with what I just said? I agree. But I do like the part about, and accommodations will be made for those students who don't have access.

I agree. I need you to say that again. Jeff will make this sound good. But something to, like, take out teachers all the way through, make accommodations for those students, and say accommodations will be made for students who do not have access to personal electronic devices, no student and then keep the last sentence Perfect Great We adopting the passive voice Well, I think it goes back to what Jeff was saying originally, is that first sentence about giving the superintendent or the building principal, starting from the top down, which makes perfect sense to me.

The piece about, yeah, we can, of course, wordsmith this however, you know, the board wants us to. That's fine. I think I was looking for what's the addition. What does that add to?

By removing that, what does that add? And so that was the only question that I was having is, you know, it's almost like if or another option might be, you know, to add something before the teachers, you know, when permitted by the principal. You know, the building principal teacher. You know, it's like, it sort of just reinforces that chain of, like, decision making.

Could be another way to look at that without striking this in a way that might alter the intent. But isn't it in that green part? Because the administration should develop. It is.

I'm just saying, like, we could, if the board wants to reinforce. I like that, Jeff, because I think part of what wasn't sitting right with me about mentioning teachers is that we as a board can't enforce or not what teachers are doing, right? We don't have that authority at all. So I want to make sure, you know, policies need to be enforceable by the board.

So when we're talking about teachers, I don't know if I explained that right. Did Jeff take out teachers and what he said? No. This is just an option, but no, I did not.

I would say add something before that sentence. Any other comments? When approved by the superintendent or building principal, the rest. Or, you know, we have the word spiff because it talks about what the assistance.

I mean, it's just all I would say is the board just be, you know, thinking about the spirit of what it's trying to say and just making sure the language doesn't, we don't lose the spirit of that in the language. Any other suggestions on any of the other highlighted green recommendations? I'll just say one thing about the idea that we're going to give the goal. We changed the wording a little bit when we were looking at Leo's draft.

I would say that we made it to purpose, And I believe what it said was the purpose is to create a phone-free educational environment. Right, which we need to define. So that's an important part where we decide, to the extent practical, that we decide what that definition is, because in my eyes, having a phone permitted at all is not meeting that goal. If we're going to use a term like educational environment, we do need to define it, because I think some people would consider that a classroom, some people might consider that a building.

Correct, that's bell to bell. So, let me look at it again. So you just defined it, and your interpretation of it. That would be the interpretation, correct?

So is that what the board is telling us? No. No. Right.

I don't think that's what anybody is saying. Correct. So that's the, what did we have before? Instructional instead of educational environment.

Or education. The superintendent, the principal. Can I, another idea. The word environment actually, it caught up, getting caught up for me too, and it feels like about a place, environment and place.

And so I think another way to consider this would be to rephrase that purpose to talk about what I think the board has been saying is to reduce distractions, reduce things that distract students from learning. Like, if the purpose is written in that sort of way, does that help get you further along in your thinking as opposed to talking about educational environment where you have to go through and make those definitions that you were talking about? So, again, just an idea that might, if you tweak it a little bit, does it get you further faster or not? Because I do think that definitions can certainly, you know, would be important if it's going to stay in there.

I think that a productive suggestion I you know I think we going to get I doubt we going to reach agreement on wording of that sentence sitting here tonight I think it just going to become difficult But I think that is a productive direction to look from my point of view Does anyone else have other suggestions about another phrase other than educational environment? Maybe we could go back to that first slide on October 9th for some help. Go back to what? The slide on October 9th where they said these are the things we all agree on.

Maybe that's a place to start. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think you said this, Leo, or somebody did. We also should not just say phone-free, but personal electronic device-free.

I don't know about that. No? No, sorry. Oh, because they have laptops.

I just blurted. Because they have laptops, I guess. Excluding laptops? We need a call-out for phones, for sure.

But I think... I think it needs to, I think phones are different from many other electronic devices. But the policy is not just about phones. I understand.

So I'm trying to think how to. So how to, I'm just saying the ones that are given to us wouldn't qualify. Turn your mic on. We can define that here.

Do you think, Jeff? Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about a conflict with devices that are provided to students. Oh, you weren't? No.

Okay. I was thinking about what is the board's intent regarding the limitations on that general category called personal electronic devices. This idea to, because I think I heard the comment about, oh, we wouldn't want to limit student access to their own personal laptops. Right, I heard that, I think.

And then there was a thing about earbuds and that kind of stuff. So I think you've got to take that out a little bit further and start thinking about all the different things that are personal electronic devices. And so if this idea of the phones as being a subcategory of that is this particular problem that you're really looking at right now, then I don't know that I would see a problem with calling out the word phone as part of that. It doesn't, to me, that does not reduce the impact of the overall policy language to include everything, right?

That way, again, our building principals, superintendent, make the rules about the different things. So when the next technology item that comes out tomorrow that we didn't exclude because it didn't exist today, that we want to make sure that we're being thoughtful about that. So that would be, you know, to me I don't see a problem with if you wanted that purpose statement about phone, the word phone does not like cheapen the rest or does not negatively impact it. I guess I just wonder though if that's the purpose statement.

Correct. Mentions only phone, then what does that say the whole thing? So what you have, I think, you'd have to do is say the purpose of this policy is to, okay, maybe the phrase is going to change, but create a phone-free environment and otherwise regulate personal electronic devices. Right?

That solves that problem because you've got, you've covered the full policy. We can't have the goal just focused on phones when the whole policy is about other. Yeah, you've got to just add the and otherwise regulate. Right.

Okay. Are we good on this one? Okay. Well, the only last thing I'll say, if we're going to talk specifically about this, is the bottom.

That's sort of a separate paragraph. You know, we've debated about whether or not that should be in policy. Thank you. If we don put it in there it worries me because of what I said last meeting about this needing to be addressed more than annually I do agree with Stace on this one Chris and I said saying that everyone else said that Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried So this many, could we say, are part of our purpose?

I don't know. Just is there a reason to put in there that this particular policy needs, will need to be readdressed more often than some other? I'm just throwing out ideas. Maybe not.

I'm just, I hate leaving it up to the president and the superintendent to make sure it's on the agenda when this change is so fast. Right, but any board member could propose to put it on the agenda at any time. And we need to make sure that that is happening. We don't generally have that happening.

But we have a policy in place that says that any board member can ask to put something on the agenda. That's why I got on the agenda. But that doesn't always happen. It doesn't always happen.

Each of us as individual board members needs to make it happen. I've tried to, and that has not always happened. That's what I'm referring to. Wait, that's why it was on the agenda in June is because you requested it.

No, I asked for it in June. You said it would be on the agenda in September. Oh, sorry, when you asked in June, that's why we put it on the agenda. Well, I asked for it in May.

Right. There's no time frame. I'm not disputing or whatevering. It did happen.

I'm saying you're saying it didn't happen. It happened. It got on the agenda because you requested it. I think it got on the agenda because of the parents.

No, it didn't. Okay. Because by the time it was on the agenda, they hadn't gone through their policy steps yet. Yes, they had.

No, they hadn't. A vote of four people. They went and chunked down. Yeah, but after we had already agreed to it from Pam's request.

But it technically wasn't there. Their school year hadn't started. A vote of four people gets something on the agenda, right, whether formally or informally. And furthermore, a vote of four people elects a president of the board who sets the agenda.

So every year, we could always, for the rest of time, for School District of Clayton, we could say, four people could say, we're only going to vote for a president who agrees to put this on the agenda. Yeah. And you keep it on every year. Yeah, totally.

You know, my objection of putting it in policy is that that's an exception to every other policy we have. Yeah. And I don't like setting that. Yeah, got you.

That's it. I got you. Yeah. But I'm, you know, no one here is against bringing this up again in the future.

Correct. I even said that on October 9th that I wanted to review it. I'll just, from my point of view, the assurance that it's going to be on the agenda in the spring And we can talk about when we bring it up next then. Yes, there's all these other processes, but just it being on the agenda in the spring is sufficient for me, and I don't need that language.

That's my point of view. Is everyone okay taking that out? Oh, I want to speak to what Jason said about the four. So, Jason, your point was that it takes four people to get something on the agenda, But Stacey had said earlier that it only takes...

His point was four people vote on the... My point was a majority of the board can... I mean, look, I would just ask HICA if I wanted something on the agenda. How do I get something on the agenda, right?

Yeah, how that works. That's what I would do. But I know, you know, a majority can get you a long way on this board, right? And so as long as there's a majority, it's fine.

But even without a majority, it can happen. Yes, one person can't... Whatever HICA says. One person.

That's what you said, so I just want to make sure. There's a whole policy about it. There is. Yeah.

There is also, oops, there also is one if community members want something placed on the agenda, but there's like a process, a procedure that has to happen first. Okay, so we're okay taking out the last part. What did we decide about the written plan syllabus thing? We haven't.

So let's hash that out and then move on to the easier parts. Kim had suggested the goal of this policy is to create, to the extent practical or predictable, sorry, practical, a phone-free classroom. Thank you. Well, it also says the board authorizes the superintendent or building principles to determine whether, you know.

Yeah, I still just think the classroom doesn't help. It's too specific to classroom when the practice is so different. I mean, again, it can be there because you're right. There's, you know, the principle can make that detail.

But I think saying the word classroom is misleading. And it certainly isn't meeting the purpose of a, again, there's a lot of not phone-free if you just say classroom. Yeah. So one proposal is that we keep it like this.

One proposal is we change it to phone-free classroom. I'm not going to classroom, but I am aligned with Nisha that if educational environment and the pedagogy of education means bell to bell, we have a practice that is inconsistent with that, and this policy then will force a change in that practice. And I'm unwilling, based on the feedback that we heard from Dr. Gachewski, as well as the practical evidence that we've heard so far as a board, to vote in favor of that.

What about like instructional setting? Does that mean classrooms? What's another gray zone? Greyhound time is instructional setting.

Oh, I guess, yeah, because teachers need this. Sorry. But isn't the fact that we're talking about a CHS-specific thing means that it shouldn't actually be in this policy? Correct.

Yeah. Agreed. I mean, you know, Dr. Kishisi's been paying pretty good attention.

I think he hears what we're talking about here, so, you know. It goes back to the line where it says the board authorizes the superintendent and building principals to determine which Chris has articulated is against. You can take out or not where it says whether or not, just to take out words. It's grammatically you don't need or not.

Wait, where was I? I'm okay either way on whether you leave it or not. He only wants to make sure there's an Oxford comma. So the other idea that was mentioned about a purpose statement is the distraction-free idea that Jeff threw out there.

So, the purpose of this policy is to create a distraction-free academic environment. So, that's what the practice, that's what our language is with the practice. And when you say academic environment, you mean classroom settings? Well, at the high school, yeah.

But does it mean grayhound time? Well, that would depend on what you're doing during grayhound time. But it's potentially academic environment. So you shouldn't have your phone out if you're meeting with a teacher.

Is that a conflict, though? Because Greyhound time includes lunch. Correct. So it would...

Yeah, which is why we delegate. Maybe we just take this line out. I mean, that's the... I would, I think, a distraction-free academic environment and otherwise regulate personal electronic devices.

Could I... Distraction is a big word. How about we just take this line out completely? I mean, I'm...

A value statement in this. A guiding principle. Yeah, what was on that slide? Do we remember?

Do you have that slide? The one, I only have a few of them, so I don't know if I have. I have the slide that says are thoughts supported by literature, and then I have all the practices. I having a hard time seeing how like these bullets go more in profile of the graduate type of documents versus policies Do you have other policies where you reflect value statements No.

That's a good point. Open communication with the district students, parents, and employees of the public is essential for the school district to operate effectively as the lead in for public information program. I mean, we do have value statements. If we don't have agreement.

We do have value statements in our policies. If we don't have agreement on a value statement here, then we don't have one for this policy. But it's not a foreign concept. I'm reading from the public information program policy.

The first sentence just says, Open communication is essential for the district to operate effectively. That's a value statement that leads into the rest of the policy, which is much more detailed. I mean, if we're having difficulty refining this one, and I understand that, but that's... I really, you know, I get the desire to hash this out in public, but in the past when we've had policy revisions, we have taken it offline and brought it back.

I don't know if that makes, I think we're starting to wordsmith now a little bit here. And so I don't know if it makes sense to take this phrase offline, pick something from slide nine, you know, I mean something like that and be able to come back to the board. I think we get the intent here. I think we were doing it to help them when they go to make a second reading to know, and this is a hard one, this is a big one.

They're really trying to get our guidance. Yeah. How do you take it offline without violating the Sunshine Law? You can talk about it in small groups.

But not even that. You would give it to us before the meeting is what he means. So she would, sorry, they, the group, would submit it to us on Friday before the Wednesday meeting. That's offline because we, as individual board members, would be able to read it and then go to them individually before the board meeting or at the board meeting and discuss it.

Is that what you mean? Yeah, or some process that allows, that doesn't get anywhere near any sort of sunshine issue, but allows our team here to craft some language and be able to sort of get some feedback on a one-on-one basis or whatever the case may be to see if there's consensus around what we've drafted here. I just don't want to spend the next three hours wordsmithing. I mean, that's just kind of what, you know, that's where we're headed here.

So is the board in consensus with the green recommended changes that we as administrators have put forward? Where? On the actual policy. Yes.

Yes. I am too. Sounds like the majority. I want this wordsmithing to happen on the additional piece, but the green changes, I agree with.

Okay. All of the green changes on here? Yes. Yes.

Okay. So the green changes have been accepted. However, there is a request to have Borg Smith's... A purpose statement.

Some sort of purpose statement. Okay. That gives us some guidance. Yes.

Jeff's good. So when we bring it back, we're going to keep all the green changes. Thank you. The communication component regarding the rules of this?

No, we're removing. No. We're not going to do that at this time? Correct.

Correct. Okay. So the piece about the syllabus or anything like that? No.

Correct. Okay. Okay. It's just the purpose statement, not any existing changes.

Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you.

So 7 first reading of JGR 1 student Discipline I go backwards I don know if everybody has as much to say about these If you do I can call on everybody again Or does anyone have any thoughts about this one The student discipline, the green suggestions and recommendations in the student discipline and the red strikeouts. These are good cleanup in my opinion. Yeah, I think, right, I agree. First of all, we had, first of all, MSBA directed us to address the AI.

Right. Which is great. And I'm actually glad they're not waiting to get it all back, that they put something in there. Does anyone have any other, anything else they agree or disagree with in this student discipline policy?

Again, it needed to be updated from portable media players. I just want to point out something I asked Nisha in an email that she responded to me. I asked why that editor's note at the bottom about drug and alcohol were removed. And her answer to me was that we were keeping now the focus on personal electronic devices and we're pushing the other piece of this out to a later date.

That's why it's removed. Okay, so we're good on that one. And 7.3 policy IGA, basic instructional programs. So these are super minimal.

This one, I was going to say, there's not really. Yeah, it's, well the initial things are super minimal about just making sure that the language on our courses represents really what we call our courses. And then you had a question about that paragraph about sort of feeling antiquated. So I gave you a sort of supplementary paragraph that I feel like sort of modernizes and ties to the profile of the graduate, our instructional program.

And I'm glad, Chris, that you asked that because it really didn't feel like us. No. Yeah. So thank you.

Okay, so everyone. Good work, Chris. Oh, yeah, Lucia. So I, Lucia, you can go.

I should have said that an hour ago. I didn't realize what time it was. I'm sorry. So, Stacey and Nisha, there is actually a sentence in this, in Policy EHBA, Spervantage, E-H-B-A, which might fit for purpose what you're trying to craft for the personal device policy.

And it says all use of personal electronic devices during the school day should be for appropriate educational and personal purposes, and shall be consistent with the educational objectives of the district. Yeah, that's actually a great purpose statement. I think that that is actually a very well-written sentence. And when I see personal purposes there, I think to students that are monitoring insulin levels on their personal devices, that's what I think of when I see personal purposes, not to be conflated with checking your Instagram or taking selfies.

There's, right. So, but I do like that sentence that is in here. Do you see that sentence, Jeff? It is in the under acceptable use.

It is right after the sentence. It is the first sentence that starts with all use of personal electronic devices during the school day. Should be for appropriate educational and personal purposes and shall be consistent with the educational objectives of the district. Yeah, I think that's great, Kim.

I understand your interpretation of personal. If it's going to be the purpose statement of this document, I might want to talk about that word personal. Appropriate personal purposes arguably just means, you know, not inappropriate personal purposes. Right, and I do think that if it's not reflected across the other statement, that there should be a personal exception for, you know, health reasons.

But that would be included as an educational reason. If they have something that says that they need it for their insulin or they need it for whatever their... That's not part of an educational objective, though. That's a personal health reason.

So we went back to HBA. Okay. My eyes are getting tired. I would just wonder if leaving that sentence alone is fine and going back to the conversation from before about put something at the beginning that would not conflict of course with that sentence but instead of trying to alter that I think maybe we kind of already have a resolution You already have it based on the superintendent or the principal.

If that's okay, then let's start there. The building principals know. And, you know, to be clear enough, a student's IP or medical reasons don't need to be written out in every policy as an exception, right? So, I think we're already in alignment.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. But I would still encourage... I'm having a hard time actually thinking how we wouldn't be in violation of the written policy when students would use it for a personal reason.

So I think, like at the high school, for example, walking down the hall, they might check, you know, texting with their mom or something, whatever the thing is. I just wouldn't want to write something that would, or like by removing the and personal, it makes me concerned that we're actually not in compliance with their own. I got you. I got you.

Okay. All right. Were we on IGA? Oh, that Melina said she gave us, right, Melina said she gave us the addendum there.

Okay. All right. Okay. We are on item, now we are on an actual action item, 8.1 policy BB2 school board elections.

Chris, will you read the motion, please? I move that we approve the revisions to policy BBB-2, school board elections as proposed in one reading due to timeline needs. Okay. I got it.

Now I get it. Got it. Took me a minute. I guess I would just like everyone to understand the timeline needs are because this is a change of where candidates are filing, right?

Isn't this that one? Yes. So the publication is actually going to come out. That's what I was going to say.

Right around the time when we have our November board meeting. Right. And this may actually be the first or second week. Right.

Right. Right. Okay. All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Okay.

Consent agenda. Chris, will you please read that motion? I move that we approve consent agenda items 9.01 through 9.08. All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Okay, the motion passes. Now, we are on board communications.

Leo, do you have an update on the legislative advisory committee? I do. First, I also went and saw 12 angry jurors, and it was fantastic. Great.

The legislative committee met yesterday evening. Jerry Hockman gave us kind of a roadmap of what the year ahead looks like legislatively. We don't have bills yet, but just dates that are going to matter. We talked a little bit about what that process is going to look like.

I think it's going to depend a lot on what's proposed, but I think I'm looking forward to good, productive conversations and bringing some things to the board that we can agree on as a legislative priority for us. Thank you. I'm excited that's getting started, so thanks, Leo, for that. I have a few updates, but I'm going to call on anyone else who has.

Pam, you have. I do. So Stacey and Dr. Patel know that I'm going to do this.

But I seek the attention. And by the way, I'm putting to you something I learned at MSBA. I seek the attention of the president. I make a motion.

It's very formal. I motion, I have it written out, that our district contract with professional survey writers I then give the floor to the board of directors to create the surveys that we use in our district. This to Stacy and someone if they want to second it for a discussion, you don't have to agree with me, but if you want to open it for discussion, you second it. So I think, because I looked into this, correct me if I'm wrong, Heike, I don't think we can vote on this because it involves money.

Like we, but, but she can make a motion to put it on a future agenda or something, right? I think you have to second it. But, but, Heike, since it involves, even with the RFP, we would have to put, like, a budgeted item on it. I don't know if we can do it right now without 24-hour notice.

No, you can't. Right now, the direction would just be for you to research this and to get the information together. The vote is no vote tonight. Right.

So I thought, I might have misunderstood. I thought Pam could make a motion to put it on a future agenda. That then the board votes if we want John to do an RFP. Right.

John's shaking his head. Yes. That that's right? So Pam can make a motion, should make a motion, because this is involving money, to put this idea on a future agenda, this topic.

Yes. Okay. We all learning not to vote for it tonight but to say let have further discussion around this topic on a future agenda item Just so I clear it not a personnel issue It's usually when we talk about hiring a resource for the district. That is during executive session.

I don't know. The intention on this is not to speak to a specific person. It's just the idea of taking that responsibility. I think that's why we probably need to talk about it.

It might be... Do you know what I'm asking for? Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I think what Pam's asking for is a discussion, just pursuing the idea of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, Pam.

Right, just like have a discussion. But if, of course, then we went to the next step, If it was personnel, that would be an executive session. I think this is just a discussion about does the board all agree that we should direct Nisha to pursue this? Stacey, if you were asked to put this on an agenda, there's policy.

We talked about it earlier tonight. If you were asked to put it on an agenda, would you do it? Yeah. Okay.

I don't know that we need to talk about it that much more. Well, I take that. Hold on. Put what on the agenda?

To vote to do this or just to discuss it? What are you asking? I would want to discuss it as a board first. I guess that's what I mean.

Maybe we need to talk about it. I think we have a policy for putting things on the agenda. Right. Well, that's what I'm saying.

She can make a motion now to put it on the agenda. Or if we want to do it by motion, that's fine. Yeah Right I think that what John is that right Or is that what you were shaking your head at That she can make a motion to put it on the agenda Correct And then we discuss it when it on the agenda Okay Does anyone need to second it No because it not a oh wait yes we do Sorry yes we do Okay wait so make the motion Motion that we have a board discussion in the future about hiring or contracting professional survey writers to create surveys that we use in our district. Okay.

Can you pass that, please? Okay. So, again, this motion is just to have a discussion about the possibility, which is what the motion says. So, all those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? So the motion passes. So we will put on the agenda to have a discussion about this.

Did we do that right, Heike? Heike, was that right? What we just did, was that right? I...

Okay. You made the motion, yep. I mean, that's... Next business in order is what you're saying.

Next business, thank you. Next business in order. We're in board communication, so does anyone else have anything to communicate? Okay I had a couple things Although Nisha touched on them in the beginning is that we all attended a Missouri State School Boards Association conference which I think actually each of us have talked about things we learned there which Pam just exemplified exemplified showed us And that was great Art was going to mention the former board breakfast which was also great I have recently been on a board conference which is a great way to get to know each other Thank you Dissatisfaction.

The Board of Directors has been very active in the planning and implementation of the board's agenda. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do. Reviewed library curriculum, and we were in different small groups. I was in a group with parents, administrator, and a librarian. Each table had a librarian.

And it was great because we were given charts about how the library is used at all different age levels and grades, and what lessons are taught at each different school building level and grade. And I just enjoy the conversation between what parents are learning and hearing about the library at home and what the librarians are saying their intent is. Anyway, that was it. Trying to keep it brief at this hour.

Anything else for communication? If not, Chris, we can adjourn. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. All those in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Board of Education Business Meeting School District of Clayton Ralph M. Captain Elementary School, 6345 Northwood, Clayton, MO, 63105 October 30, 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. 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. Board of Education Business Meeting – 7:00 p.m. Information: 1.01 Adequate Notice/Call to Order The meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. Adequate notice was provided. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.

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 Recognition – Crystal Taylor, Christine Anthes, Katie Burkard The Board of Education recognized Crystal Taylor, Christine Anthes, and Katie Burkard for their commitment and dedication to the students of Captain Elementary School.

3. Public Comments Information: 3.01 Public Participation at Board Meetings Charlie Caffrey, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Jena Schaumburg, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding clarifying the message of cell phone use and social media use. Joy Stark, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Olivia Beinfeld, Wydown Student, addressed the Board of Education regarding school lunches. Mary Choquette, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Ana Ives, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Genevieve Caffrey, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Andrew Kaikati, CHS Student, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools. Blake Williamson, Parent, addressed the Board of Education regarding cell phone use in schools.

Board of Education Meeting October 30, 2024 Page 2

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

5. 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 information with the Board of Education and the community regarding communications with students across the district.

6. Presentations Information: 6.01 Goal 1 of Strategic Plan Update Dr. Cameron Poole, Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, provided information and shared a presentation of Goal 1 of the Strategic Plan – “A Place for Everyone”.

7. Policy Policy: 7.01 First Reading – Policy EHBA: Student Use of Personal Electronic Devices for Instructional Purposes Members of the Board discussed the proposed changes to Policy EHBA: Student Use of Personal Electronic Devices for Instructional Purposes and suggested additional language to be added to the draft policy.

Policy: 7.02 First Reading – Regulation JG-R1: Student Discipline Members of the Board discussed the proposed changes to Regulation JG-R1: Student Discipline.

Policy: 7.03 First Reading – Policy IGA: Basic Instructional Programs Members of the Board discussed the proposed changes to Policy IGA: Basic Instructional Programs.

8. Action Items Action: 8.01 Policy BBB-2: School Board Elections Approve the revisions to Policy BBB-2: School Board Elections as proposed in one reading due to timeline needs. 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 9. Consent Agenda Action (Consent): 9.01 Consent Agenda Items 9.02 through 9.08 Motion to approve consent agenda items 9.02 through 9.08. 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

 9.02 Agreement with Preferred Family Health  9.03 Special School District Early Childhood Special Education Services Agreement  9.04 Surplus Property Declaration  9.05 September 2024 Financial Reporting  9.06 September 2024 Disbursement Report  9.07 Personnel  9.08 Minutes

Board of Education Meeting October 30, 2024 Page 3

10. Board Communications Information: 10.01 Board Committee, Community and Liaison Reports Mr. Leo Human shared information about the Wydown Fall Play “12 Angry Jurors”. Mr. Human also provided an update on the Legislative Advisory Committee meeting. Dr. Pam Lyss-Lerman made a motion and Ms. Chris Win seconded, to have a Board discussion in the future about hiring/contracting a professional survey writer to create the surveys we use in the district. The votes were all aye. Motion passed

11. Adjournment Action, Procedural: 11.01 Adjournment That the Board of Education adjourn. The meeting adjourned at 10:23 p.m. Motion by Chris Win, second by Kimberly Hurst. 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: October 30, 2024