St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Testing, testing, one, two, three. Testing, testing, one, two, three, testing, one, two, three. I wish there was a way that we could test it, but I don't know a way to.

They said, pause. And yes, we paused, but only long enough to gather ourselves. They said, rebuild. But what we're doing is more than fixing buildings. We're restoring energy, restoring pride, bringing our schools and our spirits back to life. From the halls that carry our history to the hearts that carry our hope, this is us rising again together. This is what leadership looks like here. Teachers preparing rooms with care, principals greeting families at the door, staff making sure every detail is right because our students deserve our very best. The lights are on, the doors are open, and the future our kids deserve is right in front of us every student every day together like never before In every spark of discovery, every note sung, every challenge met, you can see what makes our students shine. Some people say kids have potential, but at St. Louis Public Schools, we see their brilliance right now. The scientist building her first robot. The artist mixing colors until they feel just right.

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They said, pause. And yes, we paused, but only long enough to gather ourselves. They said, rebuild. But what we're doing is more than fixing buildings. We're restoring energy, restoring pride, bringing our schools and our spirit back to life. from the halls that carry our history to the hearts that carry our hope. This is us rising again together. This is what leadership looks like here. Teachers preparing rooms with care, principals greeting families at the door, staff making sure every detail is right because our students deserve our very best. The lights are on, the doors are open, and the future our kids deserve It's right in front of us. Every student, every day, together like never before. In every spark of discovery, every note sung, every challenge met, you can see what makes our students shine. Some people say kids have potential, but at St. Louis Public Schools, we see their brilliance right now. The scientist building her first robot, the artist mixing colors until they feel just right, the veterinarian caring for man's best friend. They're not waiting for the future, They're creating it in real time. And every step they take, every skill they build, every dream they speak out loud, they do it with teachers, coaches, and families who believe in them just as much as they do. This is what success looks like here. Effort, joy, curiosity, and growth all shining through our students in everything they do. Every student, every day, together like never before. When our community faces a storm, we don't wait to help. We show up. That's who we are. From staff delivering meals and supplies, to teachers checking in on students' well-being, to counselors helping kids talk through hard days. Support is what we do. And even when the emergency passes, we don't stop. Every day, in every school, you'll see adults making sure students feel safe. encouraged and ready to learn families feel it too through programs like parent university workshops they give parents tools and confidence to help their children grow and succeed this is what community looks like in slps people lifting each other up standing together and making sure no one faces challenges alone because when one of us rises all of us rise every student every day together like never before They said, pause. And yes, we paused, but only long enough to gather ourselves. They said, rebuild. But what we're doing is more than fixing buildings. We're restoring energy, restoring pride, bringing our schools and our spirits back to life. from the halls that carry our history to the hearts that carry our hope. This is us rising again together. This is what leadership looks like here. Teachers preparing rooms with care, principals greeting families at the door, staff making sure every detail is right because our students deserve our very best. The lights are on, the doors are open, and the future our kids deserve It's right in front of us. Every student, every day, together like never before. In every spark of discovery, every note sung, every challenge met, you can see what makes our students shine. Some people say kids have potential, but at St. Louis Public Schools, we see their brilliance right now. The scientist building her first robot. The artist mixing colors until they feel just right. The veterinarian caring for man's best friend. They're not waiting for the future, they're creating it in real time. And every step they take, every skill they build, every dream they speak out loud, they do it with teachers, coaches, and families who believe in them just as much as they do. This is what success looks like here. Effort, joy, curiosity, and growth all shining through our students in everything they do. Every student, every day, together like never before. When our community faces a storm, we don't wait to help. We show up. That's who we are. From staff delivering meals and supplies, to teachers checking in on students' well-being, to counselors helping kids talk through hard days. Support is what we do. And even when the emergency passes, we don't stop. Every day, in every school, you'll see adults making sure students feel safe. encouraged, and ready to learn. Families feel it too, through programs like Parent University, workshops that give parents tools and confidence to help their children grow and succeed. This is what community looks like in SLPS. People lifting each other up, standing together, and making sure no one faces challenges alone. Because when one of us rises, all of us rise. Every student, every day, together like never before. They said pause. And yes, we paused, but only long enough to gather ourselves. They said rebuild. But what we're doing is more than fixing buildings. We're restoring energy, restoring pride, bringing our schools and our spirit back to life. from the halls that carry our history to the hearts that carry our hope. This is us rising again together. This is what leadership looks like here. Teachers preparing rooms with care, principals greeting families at the door, Staff making sure every detail is right because our students deserve our very best. The lights are on, the doors are open, and the future our kids deserve is right in front of us. Every student, every day, together like never before.

I would like to call this evening's monthly work session to order at 6.46 p.m. Ms. Vaughn, roll call, please.

Dr. Harvey.

Present.

Mr. Hikes.

Present.

Ms. Hubbard. Here. Ms. Jones. Here. Ms. Foster. Present. Mr. Morrison.

Present.

Dr. Collins-Adams. We have a quorum.

Can I get a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting, please?

Make a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

Second. Ms. Von?

Dr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Hikes? Yes. Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston?

Yes.

Motion approved.

And a couple of motions for the approval of the minutes from our last two meetings, please.

I make a motion to approve our minutes from May 12th, 2026 regular business meeting and our special board meeting for May 14th, 2026.

Second. Ms. Vaughn.

Dr. Harvey.

Yes.

Mr. Hite? Yes. Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Motion approved.

And we move into the report section. So we have a report on curriculum adoption recommendations.

Yes, we do. Thank you so much. We're going to bring up our wonderful special education team, as well as our early childhood team. They'll be presenting today one behind another. There will not be a break. And so Dr. Dino, our chief of schools, will start us off.

Good evening, Vice President Marston, Secretary Foster, members of the board, Dr. Berry and audience. I'm here tonight along with members from our academics team and two school principals to report out on two pilots that we held over this school year and their recommendations. Our SLPS values center the work of the academics team. In order for our students to successfully demonstrate these attributes of approach of a graduate, we must provide them at the base with a guaranteed and viable curriculum. So we're here tonight to share our curriculum adoption process and overview. There's a lot more details to it that I can provide, but this is just meant to be like a 30,000 foot view of our adoption process. And to hear from our Executive Director of Special Education, Boyd, Nottingham Principal Long, Gateway Michael Principal Baker, and our Early Childhood Education Director, Smith, about two pilots and recommendations we have for adoption. We'll stop for questions in between each set of presentations. So this visual shows the curriculum adoption process. It is in alignment with our board policy 6140. Before we adopt written curriculum, we have to have board approval. And before that happens, there's lots of steps that come in advance. A need can be identified in many different ways. It could be that we are teaching maybe a new course, and so we need curriculum for a new course. It could be that we're at the end of an adoption cycle, and so it's time to adopt new materials. It could be that we reviewed our current materials and decided that they're lacking in some capacity, so we want to make a change or add some supplements. There's lots of ways in which we identify a need for new materials. Once a need is identified, then materials are reviewed by staff in the academics division and school-based personnel to determine which of those materials may be piloted. We don't pilot every single material that we review, but we do review them all against Missouri learning standards. Once... materials are identified, pilot locations are identified, and a pilot can begin. We always endeavor to have materials piloted across the city in many different areas and locations so that we can see how the materials are working with students across the city in lots of different schools. Then the pilot is monitored via fidelity checks. So we go to classrooms and see that the pilot is being implemented the way in which we intend it to because it's hard to make a recommendation if people are taking materials and just using them in a different way from one school to the next or one classroom to the next. We do teacher surveys and we look at student data. where applicable. Once that is reviewed, the team makes a curriculum recommendation via an executive summary that's delivered to the superintendent. And at that point, if the superintendent says yes, we can bring this to the school board for review and approval. We come to where we are tonight, which is a board presentation about the curricular materials. you will then be asked to vote whether or not to approve each of these at the June meeting. If you do approve them, then the next steps of the process in terms of the implementation come into play. The curriculum is adopted, implementation in terms of purchasing, making sure we have enough professional development, and all of those pieces come into play. And then finally, at the end of one year, you all receive a board report about what we've learned and what's gonna do moving forward. At our June meeting, you will receive your board reports for a 95% group and our new science materials. And so because we're at the end of that cycle, that's the reports that you will receive at that point in time. This is just a picture. While a picture is worth 1,000 words, it definitely also doesn't share all the level of detail what goes into this. I want to share too, there's not a defined time for each of these. Different materials have different amounts of time that are needed for adoption for review. I talked earlier at the start that our curriculum adoption cycle can end, which would trigger us to do a new adoption. Next year we will be adopting new English language arts materials K-12 and so our review process already started this year so that materials can be identified to begin a pilot early on so that a decision can be made early on next year so they can cover more than one school year. And now I will turn it over to Ms. Candice Boyd.

So good evening, everyone. Our conversation today, our ask for you is to consider that we purchased a curriculum, thank you, sorry, that deals with functional skills services, right? So we're gonna support our students as the curriculum that we have right now is just a little bit too high functioning for our kiddos. So the curriculum that we have right now will deal with functional skills. So you're dealing with real life skills, you're dealing with daily skills in the hopes that once students graduate from our system, they're as independent as possible. Two schools that we're looking at are Gateway-Michael, two of our public separates, Gateway-Michael School and Nottingham. Gateway-Michael is our public separate location where we support pre-K through eighth grade students who have IEPs, so all the students have IEPs, but they also have acute medical needs. The other school is our high school, which is Nottingham, which is our other public separate location. So again, these schools function as sister schools, They have a instructional support facilitator right now that currently supports their instructional needs. But right now, just the curriculum that we have right now across the district, it's just not meeting their needs. Whereas this curriculum here, every way, will be an option for us to use. These schools provide educational, meaning the public separates, Nottingham and Gateway-Michael. They provide educational services to students with moderate to severe disabilities who require comprehensive academic communication, behavior, and functional support. And now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Ms. Kim Long, who is the principal of Nottingham High School.

Good evening, everyone. So at the current time, a functional education curriculum is significant for our moderate to severe students. We do not have anything of this magnitude at neither of the public separate buildings. Teachers are pulling from many different resources, trying to piece together these great lessons, making sure they're hitting all the relevant information. Our students need real world experiences, need practice with this so that they are productive once they leave us for adulthood. Instructional practices and progress monitoring is inconsistent between classrooms, and then our students do require an extensive need for supports in academics, communication, behavior, and life skills. So Everway, Everway was piloted at Nottingham and Gateway Michael from February to April, so about 60 days, and we did learn that it wouldn't take teachers as long to plan these lessons, but the pacing, the structure, the organization would be there, which is a significant piece to teachers being able to do what they need to teach students and for our students to achieve at high levels. It is aligned with Missouri learning standards. There are opportunities where differentiated lessons are provided for DLM, and DLM is dynamic learning maps. That's our state systems that's used to assess students in Map A, the alternative map. It includes embedded assessments, progress monitoring, and data tracking tools that are gonna be used from pre-K, so to be used at Gateway-Michael, pre-K to eighth grade, and then that data can come over to Nottingham, and we can use it and continue learning for those students, just as it would with any of the other grade levels in our Gen Ed students with their educational data. So this is a unified pre-K through 12th grade instructional system. It's hybrid, so it's print and digital. This will also allow our parents the opportunity to know what our kids are learning in school, and then how they can help them at home. So these licenses will not only be used at school, but they can also use it at home for homework. And I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Petra Baker, her principal at Gateway-Michael.

Good evening.

Okay.

The teacher survey feedback. So the teachers, said that the lessons were structured, organized, and easy to follow. Like Kim said earlier, it was aligned with the Missouri Learning Standards, the dynamic learning map, and IEP goals. And with the dynamic learning map, like she said, it's for the most severe students with severe cognitive deficits. And within that, the essential elements, they are functional applications of academic concepts for our students. It helps teachers to see what students know and how they are learning over time. So this is something that as teachers, when they started the Every Way pilot, this was directly aligned to what we're doing in the classrooms. We also talked about us sharing an academic instructional facilitator. We've been collaborating for the last two years with professional development. And with this, in the spring, we learned how to write standard-based IEP goals. And the person that helped us came and did individual sessions with our teachers to make sure that they learned the concept. And we will continue that work in the fall. And all this helps with this pilot. It's better differentiation for varying student needs. It increased student engagement through consistent routines and improved data-driven instruction, progress monitoring, and placement decisions. We've had an opportunity to visit four different schools, two at the elementary level who were comparable to Gateway-Michael, Ackerman and Litzinger, and also New Owner and Northview that were comparative to Nottingham. The teachers and the principals both had positive things to say about Everway. So the recommendation, based on the pilot data, teacher feedback, standards alignment, the recommendation is to adopt this curriculum to address the functional and academic skills for Gabriel Michael and Donnie Hamm. Pending board approval, the implementation will begin this summer with professional development. and then we would do full implementation in the fall. We will still have ongoing coaching and POC collaboration and progress monitoring throughout the process.

So the hope is that we are able to receive this curriculum.

Any questions?

Questions for our team.

Just for the folks following along at home, I just wanted to point out that the consent agenda items tonight that tie into this presentation are item 5.8 for Everway and item 5.35 for Kickstart. Are there any other questions or comments related to the presentation, discussion? Ms. Foster?

I had a few questions, and I mean, again, transparently put this on the question catcher, but can you talk us through a little bit more about the research basis, how you all decided Everway versus the other tool was what you were going to be piloting this year? That's my first question.

Yeah, so the other tool actually was just purchased by Everway, and so they're all one. They're all one now, so it's not really a a separate option anymore. That's one piece. But the research base, this team, they talked about having visited the special school district schools. The schools are similar in demographics to our students, the ones they visited, and it was a strongly recommended materials to review. We can get you the research reports that they looked at as part of their review process.

Yeah, and just to be fair, the reason why I'm asking is because when you go to their website. They claim they have a research basis, but all of their research is over 10 years old. And so I just want us to be mindful, I think, just of the resources that we're using, how we're choosing, how we're determining if a curriculum or any kind of ed tech tool has a research basis in it. But that was one stream question. I had a few questions, but they were more related to like comments you said. So if anybody else has questions, please.

Before I. Dr. Harvey. All right. Back to Secretary Foster. I'm sorry.

OK. Well, my question was around when you developed the policy and you went through the experimental portion of it, correct?

So the policy has actually been in place since 1999. And it doesn't lay out these specific steps. These are the steps that the academics team has been using to make sure that they're identifying good materials.

OK. I'm always wondering about the parental input as well as the students. So where would that be found? Because I don't know, out of any educational process, I would like to hear what the parents have to say.

We did not survey them as part of these pilots, but we certainly can between now and June 12th.

between now and June 12th of this year?

We can reach out to the families of the students who did the pilot.

Okay, so where are we going to find the results then after that?

We can make sure that, go ahead, Dr. Berry.

I was going to say, yes, ma'am, we can reach out and make sure that we can share those with you. Normally our parents respond to our surveys within at least three to five business days, and so we can get those and compile that data, and we can even reach out to, how many classrooms, Dr. Dino, did we pilot?

So we piloted 10 across two schools. And then we piloted 40 when we get to that for early learning.

Thank you. As far as the students, we can certainly talk about what that may look like. A lot of our students were nonverbal. In the classrooms, I was able to see how they were utilizing the resources and actually responding and answering the questions. And they seemed really engaged. But we can see what that would look like to do a survey with some of the students. I know many of them are gone. Are any of them in our summer school program? Yes, okay, okay, so we can probably get that data to you, but it would be after the first week of summer school. All right, thank you.

Dr. Hervey? Yeah, thanks, I'd like to, I want to first second Board Member Foster's, because when I looked at it in preparation with the consent agenda and found that it was a single teacher researcher 12 years ago that validated this whole thing in a single district, research basis, just not there. If that's the only standard on gold standard, then it's gone by any current standards of academic research, and so that bothered me a bit, and them not explicitly building a case between academic life skills and employability for students who have moderate to severe disabilities, and they just leave that body of research and those outcomes completely off of any of what they say they aim to do, And I would hope that beyond reducing teacher time and prep and unified system, all of which I celebrate, that we also are thinking about employability and economic mobility on the other end for our students that have moderate to severe disabilities. And Everweight just leaves that off what they care about in anything they have public in their marketing. And I take issue to that, given that there are gold and platinum standard outcomes for young people who have severe disabilities in the world right now. And there's a lot of money being pumped into making sure that those young folks can thrive in today's economic world. So I just want to name that. The other piece I have a question about is, was a comment around teachers not having to prepare as long for lessons, which is solid. I love some data. So I love to just know how long were teachers preparing on average, how much time are we saving them, and then how much scaffolding will still be required and to what degree and in what areas so that we can understand what is this doing data-wise for the teacher experience.

We can gather that. I don't have it. Do you have the time specifically?

Secretary Foster?

Sorry, I didn't want to cut Dr. Harvey off. Great. You mentioned that the pilot began in February.

For these materials.

For these materials and just concluded in April. 60 days. I don't know if I have a question or I'm just like naming that out loud. That doesn't feel typical, but. I think overall, like, we just need more data that, like, supports this recommendation, I think. 60 days doesn't feel like a long time to me. February is already a short month. You have spring break in March.

Yeah. Can I build a question?

Please, please. This is discussion. I want everybody to be able to.

Yeah, I want you to build a question, which is, like, it feels like the presentation hinges on teacher enthusiasm.

Mm-hmm.

And I honor it. it is probably not the highest level governance data point, teacher enthusiasts. And so, I don't know that we would do 60 days for a new literacy pilot. We did 60 days.

We started in January, was it October?

For the 95%, we did from October through, when we did the supplemental, we did October through the end of February. For the 95%. One of the things we learned, and so what we're doing next year for the overall ELE, is we're doing a much longer pilot. I will also say that when we work with the various people who want to have us have materials, we do ask that they provide us those materials at no cost. And so sometimes that does limit what they're willing to give us.

No, I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but it does have an impact sometimes.

Yeah, I can appreciate that.

And I was going to ask, as far as data, what additional data points would you be interested in? Because right now we have no curriculum. So I just want to know what additional data points you'd be interested in.

I would love to, with no curriculum, I would make a number of assumptions. Assumption one, I'm assuming we're measuring something around student skills, so I would love to see student skill A, and then 60 days later, student skill B. I'd love to see a lesson plan A and a lesson plan B. I think my struggle is the entire thing is teachers feel like they can function better, and that is fine. But ultimately, our fidelity is to students functioning better. And we have no data that indicates that students are doing something robustly better than they did before, other than the fact that teachers feel better. And I struggle with that.

Are there no assessments with the?

We do. Some of the assessment data is in the executive summary document itself. Understood. Yeah. OK.

Is there any further discussion about the Everway and Kickstart curricula?

Sorry, my last question, and maybe this is a question for Chief Mitchell, but have we thought, like, does this relate to Integrated and Focused at all, other LMSs at the district? Yes, no? Is that of a concern?

You know, when other systems will speak to each other? So students will be able to use the single sign-on to get into this like they would with some of our other systems.

Okay, because I thought somebody mentioned all of the student data from K-8 will also be then transferred when they get to high school.

So I think the idea here is for some of these students as they're tracking their IEP goals feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, is they're tracking their IEP goals over time because currently it's very teacher-created, material-dependent, something a student is working on at the end of eighth grade. When they move to Nottingham, it's a rupture. It's not that they don't have access to their old IEPs or to see the progress that they've been making, but within the system, it creates a portfolio that will follow the student and so you'll be able to see what goals they've mastered and at what speed over time. And that's something that we currently don't have in place. That is something we don't have in place.

My last question maybe is a process question for you, Dr. Berry, which is the history and practice of receiving executive, this executive summary has been referenced often, not just in this meeting, but in general. Is there a reason why we can't see that to be able to get comprehensive understandings of these presentations?

There's never a reason. You can get all of those.

That would go a long way.

So I just realized tonight that they weren't attached to the presentation for both of these materials. I thought they were part of what was in diligence. I will definitely put them in this Friday's board memo so you can see them. And then we'll gather this data and add to those as well. Yeah, for sure. They're not a secret and they're not meant to be. I apologize.

My last question. Oh, I feel so, I'm so sorry. Ish. My last question is the... It's the bullet point three of the recommendation says coaching, PLC, progress monitoring, et cetera. It's the next step. Do we, and I'm really looking at you all, our school leaders, do you feel like you have the resources, the systems, the family invested, all the things for all that to happen with Fidelity and FY27? And or is there something that would prevent us from being able to have a full assurance that implementation fidelity is going to be platinum level? Do you have everything you need to actually pull this off for young people's results and outcomes to be better?

So if I could just give a little bit of history. This is 2026. 2023 was the last time that Gateway-Michael School received any points for APR. Our students used to be able to use the district's curriculum with some adaptations and modifications. However, the children that we have now, 10 years ago, we were referring them to the Gateway-Huberville State School. We are now... that school. So the children that we had before are totally different from the children that we have now. And so we have been doing the best we could with what we had access to. So we don't have something that's research-based or whatever that we can use with our children or whatever. So this will help. So the data that we have is like I think she said, it's separated or whatever, what one teacher's doing for the next teacher or whatever, like I said, we're doing the best we can. But having something that's actually research-based will help us in that process.

Thank you, and you said we get all the parts. Is this all the parts that you're asking for? Yes. Okay.

Yes.

Any further discussion?

No, we will get that information to you soon.

All right. We'll move into the consent agenda portion of the evening.

No, we have to do the early learning part of the presentation. Excuse me.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Thank you. And now I'm going to invite our early childhood director, Linda Smith, to come and share about the pilot for the kickstart materials. Linda Smith.

Thank you, Dr. Dino, and good evening, everyone. So who we are, Early Learning at SLPS? We serve pre-K students across 125 classrooms in 40 schools with capacity for approximately 2,132 students. To put that scale into K through 12 terms, our pre-K population is roughly equivalent to the number of 11th and 12th graders in SLPS. There we go. So tonight I'm bringing forward a recommendation for a pre-K supplemental literacy adoption. And here's why this is important. Bear with me, I got a lot to say about this part. Project Construct is the core curriculum for our pre-kindergarten program, a high quality, state approved, play-based model rooted in developmentally appropriate practice. It's the foundation of early childhood instruction in this district and remains our core curriculum. As social constructivists, we believe children learn through play and interaction with each other. That belief is absolutely critical for our young children with developmental disabilities and our multilingual learners. However, some skills require explicit instruction. Take a ball, for example. Through play, children learn that it bounces or it doesn't. They learn that some are hard, some are soft. They learn it can hurt when one hits you, but they will never learn it's called a ball or that it's a sphere without someone telling them. Similarly, while the brain is hardwired for language, reading has to be taught. Children do not discover that blending sounds together makes a word, or that the letters C-A-T represent sounds that they can blend together to say cat. These require direct, explicit instruction. Play only takes us so far. We've been trying to bridge that gap, both as a system and as individual teachers and schools. Our team has provided tier one and supports across the district, lesson plans written by the early learning team, handwriting workbooks and sound cards. And our investments have produced incremental gains, but we have reached the limit of what unsystematized supports can do. The chart on the right shows what teachers have been doing on their own to fill the gap. Two thirds, 67% are using YouTube videos daily for literacy instruction. And over 70% are using Teachers Pay Teachers or previously created personal materials once a week or more often. These aren't occasional supplements. They're forming the core of our literacy instruction in pre-K classrooms. Each of these bars represents a teacher recognizing the gap and trying to fill it on their own. As we have seen on walkthroughs, outdated strategies such as letter of the week, sight word flashcards, and word walls persist because nothing structured has replaced them. Our 125 classrooms range from buildings with a single pre-K teacher to large early childhood centers. We also have teachers from all backgrounds. and some who brought valuable skills from retail or customer service jobs, and some veteran teachers with more than 20 years experience. Literacy instruction needs to work for all of them, and every one of them needs the same instructional practices. Most importantly, we are a school system, not a system of schools. Research consistently demonstrates that the number of letters a child knows at kindergarten entry is one of the strongest predictors of their reading achievement at fourth and eighth grade. Pre-K is not preparation for school. Pre-K is the foundation of every literacy outcome that follows. That's why this matters. Pre-K is the pathway to portrait of a graduate. So we piloted five literacy programs and a stratified design across 50 classrooms in 14 buildings over six months. 64% of pilot classrooms were neighborhood schools, 36% were magnet, 68% were located in South City with 32% North. Statistics that match our distribution of students exactly. We evaluated teacher feedback against three criteria. One, time spent preparing for each lesson. Two, continued use after spring break when use became optional. And three, whether teachers would recommend the program to the board. Kickstart was the only program that performed strongly across all three criteria. On the survey, following the question about board recommendation, I asked teachers to defend their decision as if they were writing a social media post to a colleague. A veteran pre-K teacher with early childhood letters, certification, and a high number of multilingual learners wrote, Kickstart is an engaging phonics program that students and teachers love. Students learn needed pre-K skills in a playful way. Teachers will appreciate the easy prep. The recommendation is our current core curriculum plus a three-component supplemental literacy package designed as a coherent ecosystem. Together, this ecosystem addresses all the components of Scarborough's reading rope, the research framework that maps strands needed to become fluent readers. Kickstart Literacy from Teaching Strategies is the anchor of the recommendation, short daily lessons that build foundational literacy skills designed around the science of reading and created specifically for pre-K students. And this is only just a few years old. It addresses phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary in spiral lessons throughout the year. Because of our high mobility rate, that's important because children who miss a few days of school do not fall behind on skills. Additionally, as a standard in our department, the materials feature children across all skin tones in everyday context and learning. Readiness and writing for pre-K is the handwriting component of Learning Without Tears, which is the most widely used handwriting curriculum in US schools and has the strongest reputation among occupational therapists in the field. Reading and writing reinforce each other. When children form letters with their hands, they're strengthening the same neural pathways they'll use to decode these letters when reading. For us, writing is automatic, but it wasn't always that way. When preschoolers write, they have to think about holding the pencil, holding the page, envisioning the letter in their mind, and then making their hand do the work that their mind is telling them to do. So I have a little demo for you. So first you have to decide which hand are you going to write with. That may take some time to figure out. And then you have to figure out how to hold the pencil. Is it like this or like this?

Are we holding it way up here? No, it has to be down here like so.

Then the students have to visualize the letter in their mind, so they have to have some kind of memory and be able to hold it in their working memory of what that letter looks like. And then their brain has to tell their hand what to do, and their hand has to have enough motor control to be able to do it. So now they're ready to write that letter. So if they were writing, for example, a T, then they would start at the top with the hand that they've chosen, holding the pencil the correct way and their other hand on the paper, down, and then they'd lift up, come back over a little bit, and then slide to the left. So as you can see, it's a fragile and complex process. That's why explicit handwriting instruction is so important. designed specifically for pre-K, as all these materials are. This program meets children where they are and builds writing skills one step at a time. The Alphabet Sounds Teaching Tubs from Lakeshore Learning close the only material gap identified by teachers in the Kickstart Pilot. These tubs are 26 small bins, each containing miniature objects with the same beginning letter sound. So children pick up an apple, an alligator, an ant, while practicing the sound ah. The objects are how children connect concrete experiences to letter sounds. Kickstart instructs teachers to find objects in their classrooms that start with each letter sound, but without district-wide procurement, classrooms would continue to depend on which teacher has the time, budget, resourcefulness, or knowledge to acquire these materials. Exactly the inequity this recommendation is designed to end. every classroom, every child, the same strong literacy foundation. So I'd like, as you contemplate your vote over the next two weeks, I'd like you to consider this. We're not just buying curriculum, we're investing in literacy as a family legacy across generations, planning for children who aren't even born. The four year olds sitting in our pre-K classrooms this fall will be SLPS graduates in 2040. Parents entrust us with the people they love most, and this is what we owe them.

Thank you. Needed to hear that, so thank you. Are there any questions or comments about the Kickstart curriculum? Dr. Harvey.

Hi. I'm ready.

Oh, mercy. Sorry, Dr. Perry. So thank you for the presentation. Great presentation. I appreciate the pilot methodology in particular. It's stronger. I appreciate that. I'm curious around data again. So I saw the three criteria being used to assess the recommendation, teacher time, again, optional use, and then what they recommend. so it leaves this open question right like what did you see and can we have pre and post data around like letter knowledge phonemic awareness kindergarten readiness whatever things you measure yeah so we did collect student level data actually but

We've learned a few things from doing this pilot, and everything didn't go the way that we thought it was going to. For example, when we created our assessments for the pilot specifically, we had some yes and no questions, which then led to students to guess. So that created some construct validity with our actual questions. So in certain cases, teachers accounted for that, and they marked that students were guessing if they could tell, and in other cases, they didn't. So that created problems with the student data specifically. And also, as you know, we can't make causal claims about what happened because our sample sizes were too small. So we had 10 teachers in each group. So there were 50 total. There were five groups. And then there was a letters-trained teacher, a special education teacher, a new teacher, or an ILA, and then the rest of veteran teachers in each one. We did not have information about how long those had been veteran teachers. So some of them may have been a veteran for two or three years and some may have been for 20. And so that created some inequities that we didn't realize until we got to the survey and asked how long have you been teaching? And then we realized that certain pilot groups had stronger backgrounds in early childhood literacy than others did. So we have the student data It does show that Kickstart and Hagerty actually were the strongest two of the literacy pilots that we did. So I'm happy to share that data. Again, we did it from September through spring break with many teachers continuing to do so afterward. We also collected aggregate student data from all teachers, not just pilot teachers, but from everyone across the district on letters, letter sounds, numbers and some other kindergarten readiness skills. So like I said, happy to share. There's just a lot of context that goes into the data and we would have probably changed some things had we known on the back end.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the transparency and vulnerability about changing things. I still would like to see that. I think it's a critical part for anytime something comes through to not have, it just feels like a miss. So I would love to see it either way. I think my, my, my second question, probably my last is I'm familiar with teaching strategies. They, you know, whatever. Great. Um, kickstart. So new 2024. Um, I have a default orientation to be an early adopter, but I'm curious how other people reacted to such a new product that doesn't have a lot of validity in the ed market yet.

Yeah, so the good thing, as you said, is that creative curriculum does. And being a newer product, we're sure that it's aligned with the science of reading, which is really important. So in the instruction, we saw teachers using the vocabulary of the science of reading, like using the words fricatives, stops, nasals, and things like that when they're talking with students and students in preschool using some of that terminology as well. So we were really looking for something that is truly aligned with science of reading and not something that's been around for a while and then just remarket it that way.

Got it. So then given that plus the previous answer, is there a world where you would want to expand your pilot, validate student data, and then do a full adoption before just a full adoption on invalidated student data?

So potentially, but the issue is that we are using a lot of supplementary resources right now. And so it feels like we're still not doing justice to our students. if we're not moving forward with this coherent package, essentially.

Further discussion? All right. It's consent agenda time. So to begin, Executive Assistant Vaughn has an announcement about four items that will be removed from the agenda.

Okay, items 5.6, melt water. Item 5.38, was that the pre-K supplemental literacy? 5.42, final site. 5.45, robo head. Those items will be omitted from the agenda and they will come back around at another date. And the 5.38 was a duplicate.

Thank you. So now we'll proceed to the consent agenda. We're going to go 10 items at a time with some possible exceptions for thematic grouping, for example, the three demolition proposals. Just to start, I wanted to state my belief that the consent agenda should be used for uncontroversial items that are lower cost or grant funded. As a board member, having million-dollar contracts mixed in with backpack donations on a randomly ordered 86-item consent agenda makes it hard to prioritize my attention. So we'll start with items 5.1 through 5.10. Does anybody have any questions, comments, discussion? 5.1 through 5.10. Ms. Hubbard?

I just want to say 5.1. Growing Green does a great job with those plants. They look amazing. And I just want to say that I'm glad we're keeping them.

All right. Sorry, Ms. Jones?

I also wanted to comment on Growing Green. They take care of the plant life at 801. And I'm really hoping in the future that many of our vendors that we have in the building and throughout the district will take on some of our students and help train them in those areas because we have so much available property in the empty schools that our students and our families could benefit from those skills. And I'd also like to comment on 5.10. And this would be students, we have 125 students, I think enrolled in the business multimedia programs at Gateway STEM, Clyde C. Miller Central, VPA, Vichon, et cetera. And this is a DESE approved industry recognized credential program and I am so very proud of the district for participating in this and giving our students an opportunity as this. So kudos to 5.10. That's it.

Dr. Hervey? Yeah, my comment building on Board Member Jones is I would just love to see in like a 5.10 and in the future when we talk about and use key performance indicators that we actually provide data like numbers and not narrative statements that don't provide a baseline, a growth percentage, a ratio. And so they're not indicators around performing on anything because there's no number to actually evaluate. And so that's going to be my universal comment on every bar when something is related to students, is there was almost an 100% missing rate of actual quantitative numbers used. And I struggle to vote on or have a point of view on a thing when, again, our job is students and we don't use data that tells the story of students for 80-something items. And so I just want to raise that about 5.1 to 1.10 and then all the rest that are coming.

Yeah. Absolutely. Point well taken. Also, though, if it renewals, if you look on the video performance report, we also put it on there. But we have that. We hear it. And we'll make sure we have those KPIs and the data on there.

Just to build a bit on Dr. Harvey's comment, another standard field on the board action reports is the alternatives field. And I think a lot of times the alternative is basically if we don't pay for this, we won't have it. Which, while true, there could be more thought put into thinking about other ways to accomplish a similar goal. Any other comments on 5.1 through 5.10? Okay, we move on to 5.11 through 5.20.

Dr. Hervey? Yeah, I have a few. So for 5.14, around the ratification of the AMS contract, and then the, well, rethink it, I have a separate set of questions, but around the ratification of AMS, and then the one I think immediately following, I think it's career safe, maybe both, is, if I start on AMS, like, An under forecast by $3.176 million is wild. And I reckon- 159% increase. Yeah. And the only, to the transparency about the catcher was, the explanation was more staff across multiple categories utilized. to the tune of $3.1 million. And so my open question still is, it's gonna be so redundant tonight, like what data did we use and what data did we not use to under forecast a $3.1 million gap in staffing? And then following down to my next line of like, An 159% increase across multiple categories is a systems error somewhere on humans around like we didn't catch something.

Yeah, I'll jump in a little bit. So with the, and feel free Ms. Boyd if you want to. So what happens is at the end of the year, you look to see what staff you have. And then when you realize that you are using different agencies and you don't have an actual staff in house, it does add up to be a lot more I think this year maybe was a better year because we come in the past and had to ask the board for ratifications for the current year for upwards to $5 million because the staffing agencies and what we paid to them is so expensive. We would love to have our own in-house staff for everyone, but it's a huge cost. So I do know Ms. Boyd and her team, they were looking to get projections for various areas. I don't know, Ms. Boyd, if you want to mention what you did around projections. but I do know we were looking at earlier about projections, and based off the projections, we're seeing it's going to cost us, for what we spent this year, it cost us an additional $3 million based on how much the agencies are going up in their pricing and what staff we do not currently have and we were unable to fill over the last year. The 150, the increase, again, the staffing agencies, they know we need them. I wish there were more agencies we could say, hey, we're not gonna pay the cost, but right now, our options are really limited,

regarding the staff because special education is an area where we have to make sure we're providing those services to our students but you're right it is it is definitely huge i mean i hear that doctor i would just name like if i if i went back to my board and said hey some things change and it's going to cost us 3.1 million dollars sorry costs went up they know we need them etc i hear you i guess i'm just it's a it's a it's a lot It's a large number. It's a large number that I guess the way I think about budget forecasting is I would much rather vote on a thing that's $6 million. And you say, oh, we saved $900,000. versus vote on a number particularly now that you've named we have precedent we have always asked to increase that's actually even more reason why this is ludicrous which means we have fiscal data that tells us we always ask for more which means we're just constantly under budgeting it that that that's inconsistent to me yeah i mean we've always asked for more in that actual year and we didn't ask for more in this actual year this is for next year

No, this is for this year. This one is for this year. This is for March 31st.

You're right.

My apologies. Point taken. Point right. It holds. It holds that we constantly are asking for more.

So to your point we did forecast differently for our renewals for next year based on our actual costs of this year and the actual rates for the staffing agencies. I'm not sure what metric was used to for the initial contracts for the school year but our renewal contracts for next school year because you're absolutely right. We should know ahead of time how much we're going to spend and maybe there's like a 10 percent variance or something but not something like this. And so we did. Ms. Boyd and the finance team and the director of nursing services, because those are the majority of these particular ones, we did put forward the renewals, which you all approved, thank you, last time at the actual rate plus the new rates for next year. So hoping to avoid having to come forward, moving forward with any amendments.

Ms. Hubbard?

I don't know if there's... a satisfactory answer to this question, but who profits when the agencies raise their wages? The agency? Okay, I saw that one of, I think it was AMN, they're a publicly traded company, and so it would go to shareholders, and I know this is a really big systemic problem, but as a society, we should do something to fix it because it's completely unfair for our children to be served with people who may or may not be next, come back the next year. Like it's just not good for children for this to be money in somebody's pocket, which is not anything anyone here in this room can do. But I just wanted to say it out loud.

Any further discussion on 5.11 through 5.20? All right. We'll move on to 5.21 through 5.30. This is just singing the same song again, really. But on 5.24 for managed care therapy, that's a contract that went up 108%. It was misforecast also. Let's see. Any other discussion on 5.21 through 5.30?

Dr. Harvey? Thank you. Dr. Dino, can you talk a little bit more to 5.29 about the cost is not as critical to me as the understanding the what and the why around the VR initiative?

Yeah, certainly. It is a result of what DESE calls a 50-50 grant where they offer school districts, they will pay for half of something and then we pay for the other half. Sometimes it's different percentages, but they're all called 50-50 because they wanted to trial across the state what this would look like if students were able to use these virtual reality headsets to explore different career options and see how that helps them select different CTE pathways. So this next year would be year two for us. only if we receive funding from DESE, which we won't know until July 1st. So that's another piece to this particular one. We do find that the students at Gateway STEM and Clyde C. Miller are finding them enjoyable. It gives them a different way of seeing the different pathways available to them without having to go on a field trip or go see something at a time. And so that's the purpose of these headsets.

Thank you. And so this would be going into year two?

This would be going into year two.

So that means we should have baseline data around whether it's yielding its intended outcome, and yet the key performance indicator says baseline will be taken at the beginning of the year? So from year one, to what degree did it contribute to students selecting something different?

So we I can get that specific information for those two schools because they used it in their ninth grade classrooms whether or not which career pathway they chose.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF- All right.

We. Any other discussion.

DIRECTOR DEWOLF- I guess the order question which is like. is voting on discussing it now ahead of DESE's 50 50 is to just to get ahead of efficiency? Is that the only reason we're talking about it now?

Yeah. And we also have to come and ask for approval to enter into grants before we do. So that was one of the reasons why we're coming.

Yeah. And so I would say also because there's not another board meeting for action before August in order to be able to spend those funds and have them here before the school year starts. this is our last opportunity. So it's more of a timing piece in this sense.

Ms. Jones?

Sorry, about 5.24. It's not a ratification, it is a renewal for next year. And so it's one of those ones where we think we did a much better job forecasting how much we're gonna spend next year versus what we asked for for this year.

I just wanted to make a statement about the VR.

Sorry, just to that point though, For that one, it says that the timeline though is April 28th, 2026 to June 30th, 2026. So that's a renewal for a time period that's only this fiscal year?

Yes. So we do a contract renewal as well, but this one, asking for the services. So I looked at it, I wasn't going to say anything, and then you came up, and I'm like, ugh. So yes, we are requesting additional funding for this one. That is correct.

Yeah, and unfortunately, this is the time of year when all of the things come together, both the renewals for next year and a recognition of where we ended up in terms of the costs spent versus what we had anticipated.

Mr. Jones? I just wanted to say thank you in terms of the VR program at the schools. I remember when it first came out at a school expo or the beginning of the school, and the children were very excited about it, and I was excited as well being an older person, but I appreciate the experiences that they had with those VR headsets. Thank you.

All right. Move on to 5.31 through 5.40. Ms. Hubbard.

Regarding 5.31, does every school that has instruments know that this is available?

So I'm pulling this up. I believe we have a cycle for the instruments. Dr. Dino?

So our curriculum specialist, Ms. Newling, monitors all of the instruments in the district and which ones are in which cycle for repair. And then of course, sometimes some of them get damaged and it's not on the cycle and they need to get repaired. And so all of the music teachers work through her to make sure that the repairs can happen. Okay, thank you.

Ms. Jones?

The question was around 5.34, rank and dual enrollment. and there's 157,000 and some change. But this is for 26 students to attend Rankin. And I want to know who selects those students and what are the qualifications?

I'm going to call Dr. Dino back up. There are a few schools that they are selected from, but she can tell you how they are selected.

Sure, so the total number of students is actually up to 41 because it is 15 juniors and 26 continuing seniors and so there's up to 41 students. It's students who identify that they want that particular career pathway and the courses that they take and there is a minimum GPA requirement and then they go and do that program at Rankin. So they are all trades but they're student selected. We don't force children to go there if they don't want to.

So the program pays for the two years? Yes. And any student can apply in St. Louis Public School?

Any student in St. Louis Public School who meets the GPA requirements can apply, yes, and the age.

All right, thank you.

And it is not a per, I think there was a question also, it's not a per student. That is what it costs us to send up to 41 students. And so if we don't send up to 41 students, the cost is the same. So we do work our hardest to make sure that it's full.

So I guess my question is, how long have we had this program? Is this the first portion of it or?

No, ma'am, it's not. Dr. Henning, three years.

So when I attended several graduations and I love that we're talking about the colleges and what have you but we don't really highlight that aspect of St. Louis Public Schools the way we need to because there were several students I heard them say that they were going to trade school and I know how expensive everything is and I was kind of sad because I was thinking that's a big bill coming. to somebody when you're 18 might not seem so bad, but if you're a parent paying for it. So I guess my question is after they leave Rankin, what's next?

So different students choose different paths. Some go right to work, some continue on in their education. It just, it depends. But if you would like information for what the plans are for this year's graduating seniors, we can certainly get that specifically for you.

So does Rankin, when our students complete this program, do they give us the information, the certification, so that we can, like if we're saying, hey, we have a student that has a scholarship for this program or that program, that we can also talk about the certifications that they earn through Rankin?

Absolutely, yep, absolutely.

But I didn't hear any of that during the graduation.

During the graduation ceremonies, thank you. Not one time.

Mr. Hikes. How do we advertise this particular program?

So we start by advertising all of our CTE pathways and options for students during their college and career readiness course one in ninth grade. And so all of the students, all ninth graders take that class and it gives them lots of opportunities to see different things. Uh, We are moving to starting to do some of that work in the middle schools next year so that students have more time to think and explore because to your point not everyone remembers something they learned in a class just one time. We want to have lots of ways in which we can showcase. We advertise via counselors at school. We have lots of posters up in schools of students are looking at those. But the primary way in which we teach all of our students about all the options available to them are through those college and career readiness one courses. that they currently take as ninth grade, but that we're expanding down to eighth grade.

I hate to say this, but to Mrs. Jones point, we're missing a very good, you always have the word, I can't get it right now. This is a very good place where we can really highlight the thing because construction is huge. I mean, for somebody to can leave here with a license and they didn't have to pay for it theoretically, that's awesome, I'm just saying. So we, as a district, we gotta do a better job of highlighting this, because you guys don't know what opportunity you're giving these kids. You really don't know the opportunity, and we're not playing to it. Because we got, I'm sorry, we got to do better. Because that was, you know, that's why I got on the board for some things like this. And for me to be here three years and really didn't know that, maybe that's on me. Maybe that's on me. But we have to do a much better job of highlighting this because if we got 41 students that can go to ranking and learn electrical or carpentry or auto mechanics or plumbing, you see where I'm going with this? That we must do better. We must do better highlighting this. I'm glad to see it. I'm going to be honest with you, but we got to do a little better. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess next year I'm really hoping when I look at the diplomas, or not the diplomas, but look at the program and I'm going to see all the certifications from the various students. I see like Metro, they'll have scholarship mounts and that kind of thing, but those students are very proud of what they've done. I saw so many tears and so much excitement in the students' eyes when they came up to the stage. And it reminded me of where I live right now. I live in North St. Louis, right, a stone's throw from Goodfellow. And for the last few weeks, I've watched the construction of the re-paving of Goodfellow all the way down. And I saw one black man. And I live in a black and brown community, and everybody out there, they weren't black and brown and they were driving nice trucks and doing well which is wonderful but those a lot of our students were walking the streets and they didn't have that opportunity because they didn't have that construction training and if they were able to get that early God knows the neighborhoods would change so much so much more quickly and I'm just really hoping that the city will take note as well as we will take note when we're spending millions of dollars that we make sure that we're including our students in that distribution of money. So we need to do a better job and make sure we highlight our students who have worked hard at the dual enrollment programs and what have you.

See, I want to... Go ahead, Dr. Henry.

Thank you. I have two. One is 5.33 about St. Louis Community College. And... I noticed that the performance indicator is all about our young folks at Vashon. And then there's a comment made that Vashon's the area of focus for the upcoming year, but it's a program that services more schools. I don't know the total number, but more schools than that. 10, I think, 10. So my question is like, Again, data, while they are the focus area and there is a hope to quote-unquote maintain or increase student enrollment for the other schools, I don't know what that means outside of data. And so can someone color in what does maintain or increase mean against a baseline? What does it mean at Vashon as the area, as the school that is a focus? All I see is total number of. but not against anything that's happened this year.

Again, I'll call Dr. Dino up, but I can tell you maintaining, meaning keeping one of the schools, Vashon right now, although all of them are focus areas, Vashon doesn't have anyone there. So I believe this was added on here to show that Vashon needs to get one of these, the reasons why. Dr. Dino, is there anything you want to speak to that I'm not seeing appropriately? For Vashon.

Yes, Vashon's baseline is zero, and so it's a high area of focus for us for this. for the upcoming school year.

So total number of, what's the goal? What's the actual quantitative goal from zero to?

Number of students, like 200?

So at Vichon, we would love to see it start from zero to five, given the amount of money that we have for this program for next year. But we can get all those metrics for each of the individual schools. as well as the last couple of years, if that would be helpful.

And how many students are going to the Harrison Center, do you know?

As of spring, there were zero. Thank you.

Thank you. And my last remark is, so for 5.35, which is the ECE curricula, Doctor, you know, you named it a three-year adoption. I guess I'm trying to... What was not in the presentation that I'm now trying to understand a little bit more is three-year adoption. What we just heard tonight is year one stuff, and then there will be two more years of presentations or more things.

The same things we were... The presentation, I started adopting the whole piece. The costs decrease with each year. We only buy the letter soundtubs one time, and so that cost won't exist next year. And then the publisher has given us decreased rates for years two and three.

So the way to understand it is Kickstart is year one, and then we- The whole thing is year one.

Kickstart. The whole thing is year one, and then costs for year two and three decrease because the vendor gives us a break for year two and three. And those letter sound tubs that we purchase for year one, we'll be using them every year, but we don't have to repurchase them every year.

We would have to repurchase them at some point. At some point, yeah. And what's the normal lifespan of a tub?

And the rest of that would then come under our, instead of our curriculum adoption budget, it would come under our general supplies.

Got it, thanks.

To answer your question, I'm not sure of the life cycle, but we can certainly find that out. Not critical.

Okay. On item 5.33, I want to give my usual shout out to the Early College Academy and Kate O'Keefe. My son graduated earlier this month with a high school diploma and an associate's degree from St. Louis Community College, thanks to the program. So we will now move into consent agenda items 5.41 through 7. Any discussion items from 5.41 through 5.50? Ms. Hubbard?

for 5.44 about the star tests. My children report to me that the questions remain the same. And so after a while they know the questions and they know the answers and it's not measuring anything. I don't know, like that's four pieces of data. But if this is the case, something needs to change or we should measure them in a different way. Because if it's just memorization, we're not testing their learning. And I have smart children who have been at 12.9 in reading for a very long time. But that doesn't mean anything in their real life for what they actually read. So just a little bit about that.

Chief Mitchell will come up and tell you how it does change. personally, I think the schools would be higher if so, but she can certainly let us know.

Yeah, Renaissance Star is an adaptive test. And so the question, the way they're formatted, it looks very similar. There's a lot of vocabulary. It is multiple choice, right? So it is one of the state approved reading and math assessments. It is by no means ever should be the only reading assessment, right? It doesn't actually measure comprehension. It measures standards that are aligned to specifically like around reading questions, again, text-based questions, vocabulary questions, things like that. It is technically adaptive. What we find with gifted children specifically, especially when you score really high, is the next time you take the test, it starts you there. And so if you're sort of maxing out on the test, again, it can either go up or down. And so if your kiddos are at, you know, like 11th or 12th grade and they're maxing out, that might be some of the reason there's some dissonance. But yes, we would never recommend using star reading as a is a standalone assessment to look at literacy. We would need another literacy component that measures, for example, I'm sorry I said it doesn't measure reading comprehension. It does, what I meant to say is it doesn't measure in-depth like writing and those other literacy skills. But we can definitely look at the question banks and talk with STAR about the question banks to make sure that there's plenty of questions. But yeah, we have not heard that and we don't believe that that is the case, but we can certainly look into it.

I'll ask my kids for more information. But, I mean, y'all know this stuff, so.

Move on to 5.51 through 5.60. And I'll go ahead and include 5.62 in this batch as well. It's one of the demolition proposals. So we're looking at 5.51 through 5.60 plus 5.62.

Can I go ahead and say I need to pull 5.61 because I need to abstain from it?

Yes. Ms. Vaughn, can you move that to items for action on the agenda for our next regular business meeting?

Noted.

I think no additional comments, but just a request to pull 5.52, 5.54, and 5.62. Yeah, so Ms. Vaughn, those three, again, it's 5.52, 5.54, and 5.62.

If those could be placed on items for action for the next meeting so they can be voted on separately. And I'll go ahead and say the demolition proposals for Euclid, Hempstead, and Scullin haven't been presented to the real estate committee yet. The real estate committee is meeting on Thursday. And I guess what I'm struggling with is that it doesn't, I'm not understanding how it makes sense to pay, it was $1.8 million for the Euclid item. At 3 p.m. today, it got changed to 1.4 million. I'm not sure if there was just a mistake in the original bar. But in any case, to pay over a million dollars to demolish a historic building that's listed on the National Register when someone has been actively trying to buy it for three years to create 27 units of housing. And similarly, with Scullin of the 17 buildings listed for sale, my understanding is that it's received the most interest from prospective buyers. I just want to make sure that we exhaust the interest from potential buyers before demolishing a building. Oh, well, we've got some microphones that have lit up. Ms. Jones.

I'm really excited about the demolition. I'm not gonna tell a story. Look, it's been a long, long time. We've gone through Skullands, and so many people have gone in and out of that building, and so many people have told big tales and said that we're gonna do this, that we're gonna do that. Never did a thing. Came and people from across the street with charter school, they came in, they did an unauthorized visit, and they said they were interested. Look, we have a lot of interest, but nobody's doing anything. And I think we have the right idea. to go ahead and demolish the building. I did a walkthrough years and years ago, and the building was in really horrible shape, as well as Euclid, after the tornado came through and tore it up even more. Now all of a sudden, Historic Preservation wants to come and do a tour, and they want to talk. What? Where you been? Please go sit down, have a seat, have a lot of seats. Then we have Hempstead. Someone set that on fire and it's sitting in the neighborhood and the property around it has gone down. Who wants to live like that? No one. And that's been an eyesore for ages and no one said a thing. As long as it's sitting right there in the middle of the hood, it's been okay. So no, it's time for it to go. I don't care who said they got $50 million. Where they at? It's just like bait in school, the same thing. We supposedly sold that, and we did, and what have they done? Nothing. Just like usual, they come and let it sit in the black, brown neighborhood and do nothing until they think they can make a dollar off the people that live in the neighborhood. So I'm glad to see them go. Ms. Hubbard?

Can we get Miss Donna a hard hat and a hammer to be there at every single one?

Dr. Berry?

Yes. So a couple things. I can speak to the 1.8. Originally, that was for another school. We did ask them to pull that off. And it was supposed to be now for Euclid, which is much lower than the 1.8. I believe it's actually the cheapest one that's on there. Again, I concur with Ms. Donna. We have had multiple people ask or say they have money, but there are factors that they have to prove they can actually pay for the building. So it is unfair to sell a building for someone, and then they come and can do nothing with it. And again, we have multiple schools that we did give away for almost nothing, and those buildings are eyesores, and the community comes and asks us, what are you going to do with them? So if there's someone that wants to buy them, if they go through the steps with our broker and show us they have the funds and they can do it, we're more than happy to do so. But if they cannot do that, we are no longer going to let the building sit idle in our communities. They're wreaking havoc and causing more issues for our community. So I welcome if they have it. If not, we would like to proceed and move forward with the demolition.

I think in the case of Euclid, there's at least one developer who does have the funds. And I've heard from more than one person person and from people who aren't related to each other that the district is difficult to work with as for developers to work with. I've also been told there's someone who is willing to pay a dollar for the right to demolish Euclid so that they can salvage the building materials, which I think that is going to be presented on Thursday as well. And I think another important thing to note is any sales contract should include a right of reentry with clear milestones. So if we sell the building to someone and they aren't making progress on redeveloping it, then we get the building back and can do what we want with it. Dr. Hervey?

Yeah. My comment actually is a question is around the Kind of just the moral, the kind of moral and sacred process of demolishing the building. Particularly because we cannot detach race from architecture in a city like ours. And I'm holding a question around the plans that the district has to memorialize the racial complexity of the buildings before and post demolition. And is the district learning from legacy models like Charleston and Anchorage and others where race has been critically a part of their discriminatory redlining practices around where school buildings were located to ensure that we are, yes, demolishing as a practice of blight control, but also demolishing with the sacred act of recognizing that buildings have always been more than buildings. And the district has an opportunity to actually be a model for sacred demolition than demolition for demolition's sake.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that. We actually have our, he's a, we call him our historian, but he's actually over our department. Thank you, social studies department. And he is very interested in looking at talking about time capsules. So we are looking at a process of what it looks like to memorialize, have even a ceremony or a whole process and not just demolishing the building. So yes, it will be very sacred process we're gonna invite people we'll have a whole plan of what it looks like but yes a lot of our teachers are very they want the building of course to go ahead and let's demolish it but also making sure that we do it with care note also I haven't heard any pushback to I haven't personally heard any pushback to demolishing Hempstead so I think we

I think we all have agreement on that one. But I do think there is still buyer interest in both Scullin and Euclid. We are still on items 5.51 through 5.60. We can move on to 5.61 through 5.70. Ms. Hubbard.

Can you, can someone speak to the student code of conduct? Like is it materially different from last year or is it about the same?

Because the packet's really thick. It is, I'm gonna call Dr. Ailsmith and Dr. Dino up. We did go through a process of looking in depth at our student code of conduct and also adding towards our campaign about attendance, adding that component in there as well.

So this school year we went through a really significant review of the code of conduct. All departments that touched it in any way, reviewed, revised, sent revisions. We also went through layers of legal review to make sure we had the most current statutory connections there. We made significant changes, especially in the discipline section to clarify things that we'd been hearing both from parents and principals about what was hard to read and understand about the code of conduct and to make it clear. Less oriented on the. I would say that punitive natures of things and more around like how are we going to support students, especially those who might have multiple infractions in different areas. Overall, it was meant to be more easily read by families and understood and more equitably applied across schools. Dr. Smith?

I don't have anything else to add. I think she eloquently described what we did. We did want it to be a clear process. We want to make sure that we fleshed out a lot of the explanations around things that may have caused some concern or some just non-clarity before. So it may be just a little bit thicker, but we're hoping a little bit of extra thickness will allow it to be a little more clear for everybody to understand.

I'm all for clarity. Thank you all so much.

Ms. Jones?

I had questions about 5.69, rehiring Mickey O2. We've had them since 2016. And I thought the objective was to, we had a new general counsel to take the place of Mickey O2. So I have some concerns about another million dollar contract because we seem to be losing a lot of money through legal through the legal. And this is something we need to take a serious look at. So to continue to pay Mickey O2 and any other outside entity without taking a deep dive into legal, to me, indicates a problem.

Yes, ma'am, thank you. I think that was heard last year, so we did do an RFP, a legal RFP, and Make a Soul Tool did come out ahead on the RFP. We do have in-house general counsel. We're also looking to add an associate general counsel, but it is best to also have outside general counsel to support in other areas that may be conflicted in or need additional support for outside general counsel. But yes, ma'am, the last RFP, Make a Soul Tool did win that RFP.

So my question then, if they want it, then when did we put an RFP out? Because I don't recall it. And I was really hoping that we would start looking at maybe women and different minorities to start having the opportunity to join the district as well. Because they've been in there a long time. It's long enough.

Yeah, thank you. So a couple things. Micah's Old Tool, I think they were the only ones that applied that actually hit the mark for a percentage of women being inside the attorneys, as well as minority businesses. The other ones that, I won't say their names, but the ones that did apply did not hit those marks. They were one of the only ones that did not conflict. We had a few of them that had various conflicts. Maybe one of their clients may have something with the district, so they also hit those marks. I think the second part you asked about getting internal, I will tell you with our attorney Dutch, she has been reaching out to various attorneys just to make connections and to see how they can support us. And there are a few women attorneys that are very interested to see how they can partner with us in working with our current insurance companies because we have to also make sure that the insurance or the attorneys that we're using can also be utilized and approved through our insurance companies. So there's a lot of layers.

I'm just hoping that we can break it up and redistribute the funds to different agencies. I know I'm going to be voting no, so that's what I have to say.

Yes, ma'am.

Also on item 5.69, we could hire a small army of in-house lawyers for $1.5 million, but I think that difficulty is trying to find people who want those positions.

and we will still need outside counsel.

Let's see. On item 5.70, we had a very nice surprise. Dollar General donated a total of $51,625 to Mason School and the teachers there. So I just want to say thank you for that. Any other discussion on 5.61 through 5.70? All right, we'll move on to 5.71 through 5.80. Oh, Ms. Hubbard.

Sorry, this is a dorky one. But 5.72, I did not know that our students at Sumner were involved in a program National long-term survey of youth and that's really cool and I think we what was it the school got a thousand dollars for participating So that's my little nerd heart was very happy to see that Any other discussion through 5.80

All right, we'll close it out now with 5.81 through 5.86. Just a quick. Go ahead.

It's not a question as much as it is for operational note. As I'm noticing in the section that we've been in particular, a lot of the timeline for implementation are named as 25, 26 school year. Almost all of them are actually. So if we can just like. make sure they're accurate. So for example, 5.75, 2025 to 2026 school year. I don't want to walk through all of them, but if you start clicking through that section, you'll see a number of them are listed for this year, and that's inaccurate.

Yeah, come on up, Dr. Annie. Specifically around like UKG,

Yeah, so UKG and SAP are both systems that we are sunsetting. They will be incorporated into the ERP system that we are developing, and they're actually running parallel right now. And so when I was asked to take over payroll, we were looking at potentially trying to sunset some of those things this year. And so yes, we did. There were a number of reasons why those invoices were delayed. They actually probably should have been paid at the very beginning of the year. So those are correct. year and we were trying to explore the possibility of potentially sunsetting those this year but we weren't able to get the transition done quickly enough but this will be the last year for those two items for SAP and for UKG which was our chronos system yep any other discussion on the consent agenda Dr. Berry

Yes, thank you. So, you know, when you do these for years and years and years, you do them as they are asked. And so it will be great. I cannot wait for our board retreat. But I'm going to get with Ms. Vaughn. And for those things that you are looking for in particular, we would like to know so we can make sure that we get these on there and get these right. And so thank you for pointing those out. But it would be very helpful if there's anything that you want to see for sure, like you mentioned data that you want to see on them or you mentioned an order you want them to be in. If you tell us, we can make sure it happens.

Thank you.

Dr. Harvey? Yeah, I think I was just, I think one of the, what I'm experiencing on this one particularly, it's reminding me of a congressional omnibus bill. And that's what's thrown, and I just don't know that that's good practice. Fair, fair. I think, well, we can talk about it. I've seen some experiences where some of these things don't some of these things don't seem to have the same timeline date urgency as others and yet like a big bill it's just packed in um and i just don't know that's good practice in general for a public that might want to take a journey of understanding like you've got 41 million dollars to clear and like when 80 something things are packed in It can do a lot to the brain to try to process with fidelity what all is moving and happening at one time. I just want to name that.

Ms. Jones?

Did we do 8.2?

Not yet.

Oh, OK. All right.

We're about to get there, though. We're going to move on to items for action, starting with item for action 8.1. Can someone please make a motion?

I make a motion to accept item 8.1, the virtual tutoring award acceptance that is with DESE. Second.

Discussion? Just a point of clarification. Did you not want to discuss 5.8, the rest of them?

Oh, I think we went all the way through 5.86, but we can go. Okay. Ms. Jones?

Oh, no, are we at 8.2?

8.1. It's a discussion on 8.1.

I have a discussion.

Ms. Hubbard?

I'm going to sound like Dr. Harvey here, but do we have... metrics that compare? I mean, is it no tutoring versus virtual tutoring versus in-person tutoring? I have to imagine there would be a difference in quality. But do we know how that works? I realize this is a 50-50 with Desi, right? So it's obviously going to be better than nothing, but do we know how much in-person tutoring helps versus online tutoring?

I'll let Dr. Gino come up and hopefully our defense. We literally just found out about this through DESE last week.

They notified school districts across the state on May 18th that there was an appropriation for school districts that had a certain percentage of students with reading success plans. And St. Louis is one of those. And you must use the funds for live virtual tutoring. That's the only option for them. It's not a 50-50, so we are not putting in any of our own funds for this. We've been appropriated $217,000. if we choose to accept it, and we have to use one of their 10 approved vendors. What they have said is that they will notify us of what the metrics are later, so they haven't told us yet, other than we must, we identify students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade that have reading success plans for this online program. virtual live tutoring. So as far as if the in-person or online on-demand tutoring is better, regardless of what the research says, these funds are only available to us if we use the online virtual tutoring and only if we use it through the providers that they have identified.

Thank you.

Any other discussion on 8.1 before we vote? All right, Ms. Vaughn, can you please call for a vote?

Dr. Harvey? Yes. Mr. Hikes? Yes. Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston?

Yes.

Motion approved.

All right, item for action 8.2. Can someone please make a motion?

I'd like to make a motion to accept total technology advice provision and technology, 8.2. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm all jacked up. Excuse me on that one. I make a motion to accept acceptance of gifts and items donation, 8.2.

Second. Any discussion on 8.2?

Yes.

Ms. Judge.

I've been asking all evening.

Oh, yes, great. We got there.

Yeah, I'm kind of excited because I've asked several meetings back about how donations can come to the schools directly. And I remember the visit to Sumner before the tornado, and I remember the library, there were students there, and they were asking about nice, comfortable chairs for their reading nooks. And I'm really hoping that someone will consider a donation of any kind to Sumner's Library. And the second school that I would like someone to consider would be Coraline, upon visiting them. They always come through. The children, the students are beautiful. But they need new uniforms. They really do. And they need new instruments. And I'm really hoping someone would consider that. It would probably be about $30,000, which would be a great investment. I've seen the young boys go through the neighborhood and performing, just walking down the street. And their instruments look very used. And I know they're very proud of what they've been doing. So let's show them some care. I guess right now that's all, but, oh, Yateman. How could I forget Yateman? Yateman, they're doing such a wonderful job at the Verizon lab. but they also need some equipment there. So I'm hoping that someone will tap into that. They also need comfortable chairs for their reading nook as well. So consider those three schools when you consider helping our students. And I heard someone say on social media that the police need to come and round the kids up and do this and do that. We have a lot of students that are getting in trouble, but the thing about it is for me being an older St. Louisan, I see that we have not provided enough support for our students in the street, enough things for them to do. When I want to take my granddaughter somewhere to have fun, I have to take them out of St. Louis City to go find something really fun to do. And so I'm hoping that people will consider helping, reaching out to a student that might not have any adult in their life that is helping them. And to help. There might be a parent that needs some help, a grandparent, whomever it might be, a foster child that has no one to help them after they're out of the foster care system, reach out and help. Instead of talking about children, come on, let's do something to help them because they're really in trouble and we are as well when we don't help our kids. So that's all. Thank you.

Oh, I was about to call Mr. Hikes, but he turned off his mic. So any further discussion on 8.2? Ms. Vaughn, call for a vote.

Dr. Harvey?

Yes. Mr. Hikes? Yes.

Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Motion approved.

And finally, can I get a motion to adjourn to close?

Just for a point, it's not a necessity, but it has become a thing of the board to vote to carry the consent agenda items with the exceptions. So would you guys like to go and make that vote?

Yes.

I'll go ahead and I'll make a motion to carry the consent agenda items with the exception of the four that Ms. Vaughn listed at the beginning of the meeting and also with the exception of 5.52, 5.54, and 5.62.

6.1 for me. And 5.61. Are there any others to be moved to items for action?

No, it was just those four.

Just those four, right.

Second.

Ms. Vaughn, call for a vote.

Dr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Hikes?

Yes.

Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston?

Yes.

Motion approved.

And call to adjourn to, can someone make a motion to adjourn to closed session, please?

Make a motion that we adjourn back to closed session at 8.29 p.m. Second.

Ms. Vaughn, call for a vote.

Dr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Hikes? Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston?

Yes.

We are adjourned back to closed session.