St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education - Special Meeting

Okay, Miss Bon, are you ready? I am. I'm ready. Okay. Meeting is now called to order a special board meeting, May 14th, 2026 at 5:03 p.m. Miss Bon roll call. Dr. Harvey, present. Mr. Heights, present. Miss Jones here. Miss Hubard. No. Miss Foster.

I thought I seen Miss Foster on here. Mr. Marston, Dr. Collins Adams present. Um, am I Did I see Okay, I do see Miss Foster is here. Okay, we have a quorum. Thank you. Yeah. Owner of business this afternoon, Dr. Barry.

Yes. I want to first thank you all so much for having the special board meeting for us. And so we are coming to you today asking you for to you to approve SLPS to enter into a contract with HEF-P SLPS LLC formed by Highland Electric Fleet Incorporated. We are asking you to approve this for the Janu for July 1, 2027. We did send you a temporary contract over. Please let us know if you have any questions. Okay, that there put a motion on the floor and then we'll begin our discussion.

Move to approve SLPS to enter into a contract with HEF-P SLPS LLC formed by Highland Electrical Fleet Inc. starting July 1st, 2027. Is there a second? Second. discussion. I have had an opportunity to review everything and we have been working on this for some time now. Um, and I have no problems with any of it. Um, board members,

just wanted to say I'm very excited, looking forward to it. I also looked over it as well. So looking forward to it. Yes. Thank you, board member Jones. I have no questions. Secretary Foster has a board member Marson, I couldn't hear you. Secretary Foster has a question in the chat. Okay. I am using a different device. Can you read it? I can't. I can read it. Yeah. It says um and I think uh Secretary Foster is maybe having issues with her microphone so I'll read it for her.

It says Highland Highland has the right to use our buses and infrastructure to sell electricity back to the grid vehicle to grid outside of school hours. Why is 100% of this revenue going to the vendor rather than being shared with the district? Okay. And but Dr. Barry, if you could allow either Mi either of our guests really or um Square Watson to respond. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I was going to turn it over to our guest. I didn't know if um Joshua Williams for Highland to speak and he also has um guests with him as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Barry, and thank you members of the board for hosting us here. I'm going to hand it to my colleague Scott Harrison to answer this question specifically. Thank you. Thanks Josh and I I echo um thank you for the special meeting tonight and uh the members of the board for joining. Um that is provision in our contract. We actually are not installing V2G enabled chargers. So we would not be participating in that. It is in there in case we install them in the future um and jointly agree to participate. So um it's not actually something we're considering right now, but we're leaving it open for the future um if we were to change charters. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. No, I was just going to ask, was that okay or sufficient for board member Foster?

She says, "Sure." I do have a question. So, he said you're leaving it open uh in case in the future. uh how long until I mean do we have anything else to say about that because I thought the idea was to make sure that we are going to be able to provide a electricity or those type of tools to the community as well. Are we we selling stuff? I don't understand.

Yeah. So, as part of this project, we are not planning to sell electricity back to the grid. Um the clause is still in there. If there was a situation where we swapped out the chargers, um, then Highland would have the ability to do that. Uh, likely at that time there would be another discussion around, you know, what was going to happen if we actually did that. Would that actually be a change in the contract if we did that later? Correct. It would be. Yeah. Then we'd have to meet on that anyway. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Are there additional questions or member Harvey?

Thank you, Dr. Cos Adams. Is our is I'm I'm just curious is our if our contract is um as standard or mirrored against like districts or others participating andor if there any nuances that are specific to ours that I'd love for you to just call out explicitly. Um because I read I mean I'm reviewing it. I'm not reviewing it against like sophisticated knowledge of like I don't have sophisticated knowledge of this process or this kind of work. So it would just be helpful to understand it relative to other districts.

Yeah, I can definitely provide um some comments there. I think in large part the form of our agreement is very similar to the agreements we sign with other districts um across the country. So, some of your peers in this application, Topeka Public Schools, they signed a contract with, well, their contractor signed a contract with us um for a similar amount of vehicles um part of the same grant program. Maybe the biggest distinction here is that we're actually planning at some point in the future to potentially move this project to a St. Louisowned facility. Um, so we have a provision in the contract that enables us to work together to transfer all this infrastructure um, from the site we've proposed right now um, to a district-owned facility at some point in the future. I don't know, Mel, if there's anything else you want to add. U, but I think that's probably one of the biggest um, St. Louis specific provisions that we have in there.

Yeah, I think that's paragraph 13. Yeah, I I would just add that in many respects, this contract is more favorable because you've had your council engaged um pretty much from the beginning. And so um there are provisions in this contract that help the district and we're happy to work with the district. I mean, we see this as a partnership. So agreeing to those provisions if it gives the district more flexibility is something we are willing to do.

And then I do believe also we have until August 1st that we are still be able to work on any additional provisions in the contract. So please um if you see anything um board members let us know but we are still opening um and open to having more conversations if needed. So August 1st. Well, the purpose of today is just to be to be able to meet the EPA um deadline and then and I'm just restating what you said. If there are anything any other provisions that we need to discuss or look at or maybe even change, we have until August. Got it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Are there any additional discussion questions from our board members? Okay, then if and I'm trying to read the screen. If I've missed anyone, call out. Um then we'll call for a vote. Um I know Miss Foster was having uh difficulties with her volume. So Miss Foster, when I get to you, if you can just put your vote in the chat and I will get it logged. I wrote Dr. Harvey. Yes. Miss Foster. Mr. Heights.

Yes. Miss Jones. Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Dr. Collins Adams? Yes. Motion approved. We thank you all so much. We greatly appreciate taking time to meet with us today to make sure this happened. So, we do. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you everyone for being able to get on this Zoom. Um, Miss Vaughn, if there's no further discussion or any other business that we have to take care of, I'm calling for a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn this special board meeting. Second.

Roll call. Dr. Harvey. Yes. Miss Foster. Mr. Hikes. Yes. Mr. Marston, yes. Dr. Collins Adams, yes. We are ajourned.