St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education - Regular Meeting

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. 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.

Testing 1, 2, 3. Testing 1, 2, 3.

When our community faces a storm, 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 mic check one two mic check one two three four

Because we have a meeting on Saturday.

Everything that we would have gone back to.

Good evening. Our meeting is now called to order of our regular session, our school board meeting, August 11, 2026, at 6.41 PM. Ms. Vaughn, roll call.

Dr. Harvey.

Present.

Mr. Hikes. Present. Ms. Hubbard. Here. Ms. Jones. Here. Ms. Foster. Present. Mr. Marsden. Present. Dr. Collins-Adams. Present. We have a quorum.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.

board of education norms st louis board of education norms adopted april 9 2019 decision making we believe our first priority and greatest concern is the educational welfare of all students in st louis public schools we align decisions discussions superintendent evaluations district partnerships budget allocations etc to our current transformation plan We demonstrate respect for diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, and experiences, roles, and decisions once they have been made. We embrace healthy debate. We acknowledge board members with differing opinions during discourse in both open and closed sessions to gain clarity and engage in meaningful dialogues.

Professionalism.

We demonstrate engagement by thoroughly reviewing the board packet and other documents, arriving on time to meetings and work sessions, remaining on topic during discussions, and respectfully interacting with each other, the superintendent, staff, and all stakeholders. We demonstrate respect for diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, and experiences and roles. communication. We demonstrate professionalism and respect for other board members, the superintendent, and district staff by adhering to timelines and deadlines outlined in the workflow calendar and any other tasks as assigned. We conduct all official board-related email communications using our at slps.org email accounts. We read and reply to all board emails within 72 hours. We conduct all official board-related phone and text communications using district-issued phones. We check voicemail and return phone calls and texts within 72 hours. We are ambassadors in the community and as individual concerns or questions arise, we will seek to understand the information and gather pertinent facts in order to direct stakeholders and staff to contact appropriate district personnel. We channel concerns or requests for information through the board president who will then direct those requests to the superintendent in an organized and concise manner. We recognize the importance of proactive communication and agree there will be no surprises. The board president shall be the official spokesperson for the board.

The superintendent shall be the spokesperson for the district.

Board members who receive requests for board issue positions shall direct the request to the board president or superintendent. Confidentiality. We respect and maintain the confidentiality of closed session items and the board's discussion on those items.

We refrain from discussing confidential business in public with members of the press or with anyone else not privy to such information.

If it is necessary to provide a statement to the public following a closed session, the board president and superintendent will agree on a unified response prior to making the statement.

We need a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

I move to approve the agenda for tonight's regular business meeting.

Second.

Roll call.

Dr. Harvey? Yes. Mr. Heitz? Yes. Ms. Humbert? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Dr. Collins-Adams? Yes. Motion approved.

We'll move on to our spirit of excellence of Superintendent Berry. Excuse me. Motion to approve the minutes.

I move to approve the minutes from our July 28th work session, open session.

Second. Roll call.

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

Motion approved. I do apologize, but our agenda is a little out of order. Our spirit of excellence.

Yes, ma'am, thank you, Madam President, Vice President, and the Board of Education. A huge thank you to Student Support Services and the many departments, team members, partners, vendors, and volunteers who worked together to make last Thursday's Ready for Day One an incredible success. Despite the weather, our team showed up and delivered for our students and families. More than 1,200 students and families members attended. Over 200 vendors and volunteers supported the event and over 200 physicals were completed. This is what it looks like when we come together around one shared purpose, making sure our students are ready, supported, and excited for the first day of school. Thank you to everyone who planned, prepared, volunteered, adjusted, and kept going despite the weather. Your commitment to our students and families made that day possible and special. We are excited to welcome our teachers back. They returned on Monday, August 10th, as we prepare for another start of the year across St. Louis Public Schools. Our teachers are the heart of what we do, and their return, along with all of our staff members, mark an important moment of our schools across the communities as we reconnect, prepare classrooms, and focus on creating strong learning environments for students every day. On Monday, August 24th, we will welcome our students back for the first day of school. Across the district, our teams are working with urgency and care to ensure our buildings, classrooms, transportation, staffing, and student supports are ready. There is a great deal happening around us right now, but when our students walk through those doors on August 24th, our focus must be on them. They deserve an amazing first day, a strong start in a school year filled with opportunities to learn, grow, thrive. We are ready to welcome them back home to SLPS. Madam President, may we continue? Next, we would like to have academics to come up for our first presentation. Our academic department will also bring various staff from the academic department this evening.

Good evening, President Collins-Adams, Vice President Marston, members of the board, Dr. Berry, and members of the audience. Our academic division leadership team is here tonight to provide you with a high-level work, high-level overview of all of our work to support students and schools, both a little bit about what we did last year and what our priorities are for this year. The entire academics division supports all district efforts to ensure students have opportunities to learn and demonstrate each of these competencies in our portrait of a graduate. From our preschoolers demonstrating traits of collaboration in playtime or in working with others, all the way through our high school seniors who demonstrate critical thinking and career readiness skills during their learn and earn internships.

It's the role of this division to provide the foundation to schools so that they can have the conditions to successfully serve all of our students.

As you'll hear tonight, the SLPS core four have driven the prioritization of all of our collective efforts for this school year. And at the core of those efforts is continuous school improvement. School improvement does not occur in a vacuum. School level plans and district supports must be aligned. As you can see here, we have three SLPS academic goals. They're all nested together. Our evidence-based strategy of improving high quality core instruction is intentional because we know that students must have access to grade level instruction and curriculum if they're going to meet grade level standards of mastery. I'm just gonna note here tonight, we're not doing a map presentation, so we don't have school-based data. That data is still not publicly available, but we will be coming back with our accountability team in a few weeks once it's on embargo to share more information there. We don't just support academics in the academic division. We know students have to be in school and feel a sense of belonging if they're going to be able to learn and show us what they know. Our team supports all of this collaboratively along with other departments within the central office and really with schools.

Collaboration is key to our success and to our students' success, and that's why it is one of our portion of our graduate competencies.

I'm going to share our division structure with all of you this evening. In school supervision and leadership, we have five network superintendents. They're here this evening. Dr. Bailey, Dr. Glass, Dr. Humphrey, Dr. Irons, and Dr. Pollack. Drs. Bailey, Glass, and Humphrey are supporting our elementary principals. Dr. Glass, Dr. Humphrey, Dr. Irons, Dr. Bailey is supporting our K-8s and our middle school principals, and Dr. Pollack is supporting our high school principals. in teaching and learning we have dr carter special education ms boyd for our students for english to speakers of other languages we have dr gonzalez del castillo college career readiness we have dr speed and in professional learning federal programs and aics we have network superintendent dr kitson and rounding out with innovative programs which are our public separate special education schools our alternative education and our office of charter school sponsorship and student outreach we have dr sheila sherman Without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to members of our leadership team to start sharing about their work today.

Good evening. My name is Dr. Tanya Bailey, and I serve as a network superintendent for Network 4.

Good evening. My name is Isaac Pollack. I'm the network superintendent for Network 5 for high schools.

Tonight, on behalf of the network superintendent team, we are pleased to share an overview of the work that we do to support and develop principles, advance our district priorities, and ultimately improve outcomes for our students. This slide illustrates our leadership through line from principal supervision to student success. Strong principal leadership is a critical lever towards strengthening schools and improving student outcomes. Through coaching, monitoring, feedback, professional learning, and the use of data, we strengthen principals' capacity while balancing support and accountability. In turn, principals create the conditions for effective teaching, which shapes the learning experiences and outcomes of our students. Every level of this through line is connected with student success at the center of our work. And now I'll turn it over to Dr. Pollack.

So as earlier in this presentation, Dr. Dino highlighted our district's focus on the core four. For each of these core four priorities, the network superintendent team has initiatives that directly advance the work in schools in those areas. So I'm gonna go through each of those. So in the area of literacy, our district priority is ensuring principals and therefore teachers are clear and aligned on what high quality instruction looks like for all students in the areas of 95% phonics, English language arts and mathematics. The network superintendent team advances this priority through our monthly principal learning labs where leaders visit each other's schools and dive deeply into the curriculum of one of these subjects. In the area of attendance, our district priorities ensuring that each school operates an effective attendance team that monitors attendance and encourages and incentivizes students to attend daily. In the area of school operations, our district priorities ensuring safe and efficient school operations and positive school climates that encourage students to have a sense of belonging in their schools. The network superintendent team advances this priority through principal coaching during our 90 minute visits biweekly. In the area of school finance, our district priority is aligning our staff, our resources, and our expenditures to the goals outlined by Dr. Dino earlier in our continuous school improvement plans. The network superintendent team advances this priority through our development and monitoring of school level continuous school improvement plans. To better illustrate this work, we will now dive deeper into one area, which is the area of literacy. So each focus area of the core four has aligned strategies in the continuous school improvement plans or CSIPs that have been submitted to and approved by the state. In the area of literacy, our evidence-based strategy is that if principals are clear on what high quality core instruction looks like, in the areas of 95% math and ELA. And if principals coach teachers often and effectively on these look fors, then student achievement will improve. So we gather principals together monthly in what we term as principal learning labs. Last year, each of these eight learning labs targeted one subject, 95% ELA or math. We worked collaboratively with the curriculum department to develop brief administrator look-for documents that clearly defined what instruction should look like in the classroom. And then we visited classrooms to practice using this document with principals. In between these principal learning labs, the network superintendent team visits schools in what were termed as 90-minute visits, of which we completed 410 last year. During these visits, we observed classrooms using this admin look-for document and scripted and practiced with principals how they would coach the classroom teachers. Last year, we completed approximately 740 of these classroom observations with principals. Finally, on their own, principals then observe and provide feedback last year to over 2,400 classroom teachers rooted in their knowledge of high quality core instruction. This is a significant increase from previous years where leaders were only expected to track observations directly required for teacher evaluations. In this upcoming year we're excited to streamline the documentation of this visit process and a new system called kick up which Dr. Kitson will go into greater detail about later in this presentation. I will now turn it over to Dr. Carter our executive director over teacher and teaching and learning to go deeper into the work of that department.

Good evening, everyone. The teaching and learning department supports teachers and school leaders with proven evidence based instructional practices. This starts with adopting high quality curricular resources. We have created a centralized repository that provides all instructional staff with access to curriculum plans for vertical and horizontal alignment. To assist teachers in developing rigorous and relevant lessons for their students, we send out weekly core instructional documents that focus on teaching priority standards to prepare students for mastery of grade level content, as well as the end of year assessments. Lastly, my team supports the implementation of the 95% group core phonics program in grades K through five and morphing magic and monosyllabic routine cards in grades six through eight. 95% group is closing a gap in our current English language arts curriculum. As a result of the skills students learned through the adoption of the 95% group products, we have seen kindergarten students reading with ease earlier in the school year and middle school students tackling complex monosyllabic words without hesitation. As you know, last year was the first year of the discharge adoption of the 95% group curriculum. We received training and implement support at no additional cost, but while my team and I were in schools working with teachers, academic instructional coaches, and administrators, we noticed the need to bring in the product experts from 95% for more targeted support. So we purchased an additional 150 hours of coaching and partnered with the St. Louis Education Fund to support schools with in-person and virtual sessions. With this additional coaching and leader support, we gained a stronger understanding of the program's alignment to the science of reading and developing the critical phonic skills students need to advance their literacy. One example that I'd like to share with you about the value of the 95% group coaching is from one of our middle schools that was struggling to start the implementation due to concerns about teacher capacity as well as preparation. The school used their comprehensive funds to conduct on-site coaching sessions with all the middle school, ELA and social studies teachers. During these sessions, the coach listened and addressed concerns about pacing, modeled lessons, observed teachers and provided on the spot feedback. These sessions proved beneficial for the teachers, the academic instructional coaches, principals, and my team as we build internal capacity for the continued implementation of 95% group.

Next, we're going to welcome Ms. Candice Boyd to talk about special education.

Good evening, these are just a few highlights that I want to share with you, please note that I did present a comprehensive overview of special education in the spring of our 20 2526 school year. IEP implementation and service delivery will begin on Monday August 24 students will have access to grade level instruction. Professional development is taking place for our special education staff, our itinerants, classroom teachers, paraeducators. We've also supported our academic instructional coaches, and we have a planned PD session with our CTE department just to ensure everyone is in a good space for going to accommodations and supports. Plans are underway right now to present for your approval the adoption of the local compliance plan for special education. This is an annual occurrence in which the district has an opportunity to adopt the nuts and bolts of how special education runs in the district. So that is forthcoming for your review. Communication, IEP collaboration, problem solving and family support is taking place right now with our families. The event that we had on last Thursday with our families was a wonderful opportunity for us to connect with families. They've been coming down to our office just to make sure things are in place for day one in terms of services. Working with our Human Resources Department, we're ensuring that we have the right staff, right support, making sure that our caseloads are in alignment, and that our school-based supports are in a good space to receive students on day one. Last school year, we ended with 2,817 students. So in May of last school year, we ended with that number, 2,817. AND THEY WERE SERVICED BY 452 STAFF MEMBERS. THANK YOU.

GOOD EVENING. I WILL PROVIDE A HIGHLIGHT OVERVIEW OF SERVICES TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS. To support high-quality core instruction for English language learners across all of our district schools, we identified several instructional look-fors and expectations for our leaders. These documents serve as a framework for our leaders to know what core effective instruction for English language learners should look like in every classroom. To support our teachers, we have developed over 50 strategies, ESL-focused strategies, that are directly aligned to individual student language acquisition plans. And they help and serve as a practical guide for teachers to incorporate strategies that help them teach both language and content at the same time. We also focus on building capacity of educators to support English language learners in our districts, and we do that through three different ways. One of them is through professional development days, where we are supporting ELL-focused learning for educators across all of our district schools. The second one is through site-based professional development where we partner with schools to support specific needs and action steps schools have outlined in their comprehensive school improvement plans. And we also offer district-wide cohorts such as SIOP, which stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, and co-teaching for ELLs to further strengthen instruction for our English language learners. Here is a data snapshot that shows our efforts to support professional development for our teachers working with English language learners. So what we see here is district professional development days, site-based ELL sessions, and district ELL cohorts. In light blue, you see all the sessions that we have scheduled so far. And then in darker blue, you see the sessions that we have already conducted. So for example, if we look at site-based ELL professional development sessions, we see that we have already scheduled 21 sessions. and two of them have been conducted. So these two sessions actually took place earlier this morning at Roosevelt High School, where we supported educators based on the needs that are aligned to their school improvement plan. We will continue to add sessions and provide those sessions throughout the school year to all educators working in our schools to support English language learners district wide.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Desiree Speed, and I'm so proud to serve in our College and Career Readiness Department. So I'm going to just share a few highlights at this time. One is our department's support of our dual credit, dual enrollment, advanced placement, IB, and career and technical education programs. So that's a pretty large highlight of swath that we have students participating in across the district. IB is primarily at Metro, but the other opportunities we have across the district. I also wanna highlight just our CTE pathways. It's exciting that we are approaching things from a real equity lens at this point. You might remember some years ago, if you were only at Gateway STEM or at Clyde C. Miller, those were the only students that could participate in those programs. But now, students from all of the high schools can participate at the programs either at Clyde or at Gateway STEM. And so that entry point is junior year. We have a process and so sophomores can apply. So it's an amazing opportunity to allow students from across the district to participate in those CTE pathways. And then just want to lift up some of our initiatives that we've got going on. We started college trips a few years ago. So this fall, with your approval, we'll be doing a fall trip. And that will be for juniors. We invite juniors from all... schools along with virtuals. So we want to get participation from all of our sites and then a spring trip and that will be juniors. Last year we had our district college fair. So we're looking forward to that again. That's open up to all of our juniors. And that's March 4th. We collaborate with St. Louis University. So they're going to host us again this year, which is great. And so we have not only colleges and universities, but also other job opportunities and summer opportunities for students. So that's really exciting. Also on the horizon is a district financial aid night that we're looking at hosting October 14th at Clyde C. Miller. Schools have their own kind of individual financial aid nights, but we're wanting to do a district one. to make sure that it's still staying across with that equity lens. And also just our programming. We know that we can't just wait till high school to start talking about post-secondary planning. So we are looking at things from pre-K to 12. In terms of data snapshot, just want to lift up our Learn and Earn program. That's our internship program for seniors. So last year we had 419 students that were seniors that received paid internship placements. So that's great. and out of about 924 seniors to give just context to that. And we also have a lot of employer partners. So we had about 108. So we look forward to continuing those wonderful relationships and adding more if we can. So thank you for this opportunity. And I think Dr. Kitts ends up next.

All right. Good evening. My name is Dr. Deanna Kitson, and I'm pleased to share a few highlights tonight related to professional development, federal programs, and the AIC support. The work across these areas are intentionally connected. The goal is not simply to provide training or allocate resources. Our goal is to build adult capacity, strengthen classroom implementation, and ultimately improve student outcomes. Our support begins with each school's comprehensive school improvement plan and the specific needs identified within the plan. So first we align. We align professional learning with the district's priority and the school's CSIP plan. Of course, you know, we're currently in the midst of the back to school professional development, providing targeted learning for all staff. The learning opportunities are designed to prepare educators for a strong start to the school year and support consistent implementation of our district priorities and strategies. We are moving away from isolated one time professional development and toward a more connected approach that directly supports literacy attendance, instructional quality, and the specific needs outlined in each school. The focus is not simply on what professional development was delivered, but how is the learning truly impacting our students? The second, resources. We want to strategically leverage our federal program resources. Title I, which is the improvement and the to improve achievement and close the opportunity gap. Title II was really improving teacher, principal, school leader effectiveness. Our Title III supports our EL and immigrant students, and Title V is that well-rounded education. Ultimately, every federal dollar should be connected to an identified need and also comply with the allowable purchases. And then third, coach. The academic instructional coaches really play a critical role in turning district priorities and professional learning into the daily practices. Of course we know literacy is the major district focus and our AICs have demonstrated a strong commitment to strengthening literacy knowledge and the instructional capacity of our teachers. And all of our AICs are letters trained. That's I think a significant celebration. AICs work alongside teachers. They model, they co-plan, they analyze student work, they observe, they provide feedback. And this is that job embedded support to really help teachers move right from the initial understanding to consistent implementation. And because the AICs really understand the unique strengths and needs in their schools, they can serve as that important bridge between the district priority, their learning and really helping improve their priorities. Their work is essential to ensuring that professional development leads to stronger instructional and improved outcomes for students. I also want to mention that this year SLPS is utilizing kick up as Dr. Pollack mentioned. This is a new district-wide platform that supports professional learning and our PBTE resources. It is a one centralized system for registration, attendance, professional learning hours. We can record participants today. They're able to see where they're assigned. Now, let me share with you, it's new, so that means there's some kinks to work out, right? We can assure you that we're learning so much, and then next year it's going to be so much better. So the snapshot. I think this is important to share that we, the coaches, conducted more than 3,200 coaching cycles. This is an important number because this is that job embedded professional learning. And this year, of course, our AICs are continuing to prioritize the connection between ensuring what's happening in the classroom is impacting our students. And so when we think about that piece there, we also have all of, as Dr. Pollack mentioned, all 16 comprehensive school plans received DESE approval. I believe this is important to highlight because in the past, we've had a lot of feedback back and forth. Change this. Thank you. And then hopefully we just go forward. Other one. There we go, thank you. This is important because, again, in the past we have had feedback going back and forth around the state's expectations around the comprehensive school improvement plan. I think this is important to highlight that they would like to use our plans as a model to the state to say these plans are actually in real time. So the, of course, while the approval is important, that compliance perspective, the focus is really on what happens after the plan. The networks right are critical i'm in working with the schools to operationalize those plans in real time they monitor the action steps look at the implementation and then identify barriers and make adjustments throughout the year. So the goal is for the season plan to be a living breathing document that drives the work outlined in their plan. And then another piece to celebrate, a snapshot, is approximately 140 BLAs, that's building level associates. We have planned for their targeted professional development. The BLAs spend a significant amount of time in the classroom supporting students when teachers are absent or we don't have a teacher. So we identified an opportunity to really better prepare them for that responsibility. They're receiving targeted professional development. It's Teach Now. It's focused on classroom management, student engagement, maintaining instructional routines, and keeping students actively learning. So the message is simple. When a teacher is absent, we still want learning to continue. And in closing, the measure of our work is not simply the number of training sessions delivered. The true measure is whether educators are better supported, whether their professional knowledge is strengthened, whether implementation becomes more consistent, and whether those improvements lead to better outcomes for students.

Good evening, everyone. I am Dr. Sheila Sherman, overseeing Network 6 Innovative Programs, which is a compilation of alternative educational programs such as special education, where we are serving at ETS Madison, Gateway Michael, and Nottingham. the Virtual Learning Academy, Office of Outreach, Charter Schools, Blewett, and Griscom. Our priorities for the 26-27 school year reflect our continued commitment to improving student achievement, expanding access, and strengthening support for every student to address diverse needs. Beginning with Gateway Michael in Nottingham, we will implement Every Way, which is a high quality core instruction. This investment will provide students with consistent, vigorous instruction designed to improve academic performance and support meaningful progress on individualized goals and training will occur for this platform on August 19th. The virtual learning academy will implement a new platform edge annuity capable of serving up to 1000 students. This platform will expand access to flexible rigorous instruction, while improving student engagement progress monitoring accountability, in addition. This is the same platform that will be used for credit recovery. The awesome features in this platform include core content areas and opportunities in the areas of career technical education, world languages, and it's adaptable student Lexile levels. And there are practice opportunities for assessment. The platform will also be used to help support English learners who are literate in their first language. There are seven languages that can be changed to text to speech. And for those who want to take additional world languages, there are 60 languages to choose from. Training will occur on August 19th, with orientation occurring on both August 19th and August 20th. Students who are assigned to Bluet will receive wraparound services, including social and emotional support. These services will address barriers to learning and ensure students have supports needed to successfully succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. This year is the charter school sponsorship renewal year. We will conduct a thorough and transparent review process focused on academic performance, organizational effectiveness, operations, fiscal responsibility, and compliance with Missouri requirements. For our K-12 culminating event, graduation. You all know me from graduation, right? So we are continuing to identify ways to operate more efficiently. Last year, we printed 50% fewer programs and introduced QR codes to significantly reduce printing costs while ensuring families could easily access programs. We will continue using technology to reduce expenses and improve access. Our data snapshot highlights an important student goal, and our goal is to reduce type one suspensions by 10% by June of 27. We hope to go from 372 down to at least 335. We will achieve this goal through proactive interventions, restorative practices, consistent behavior supports and stronger collaboration among students, families and staff. Together, these priorities demonstrate our focus on student achievement, equitable access, responsible stewardship and supportive learning environments. Students success remains our mission. Have a good evening.

Thank you. You got just a taste of the work of the academics division. We are focused entirely on creating conditions and support so that students can be successful because we know research tells us a high quality teacher is the number one indicator of student success. And just a little bit behind that is a high quality school leader. And so we have to make sure that the work we're doing focuses on increasing both our teacher capacity as well as our leader capacity. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any questions? Board Member Hubbard.

Thank you for the presentation and for all the work you're doing to ensure fidelity. My brain just can't do that. But also when it comes to keeping high quality teachers, I mean, a lot of it is just making sure they stay through the difficult years of learning. Do we know how it feels to the teachers to have all these rigid semi rigid stuff to do like scripted things and. Sometimes that's what we need. But also.

i would want to run away um can you tell me how that works so we do as teachers and when we do surveys around how they're feeling about different professional learning opportunities and we get um i would say mostly like strongly agree and agree that they were helpful i also want to clarify the one scripted curriculum that we use is the 95 group the other ones are not what we do though provide are really specific as dr carter was talking about the like the weekly learning supports for teachers and the weekly standards documents and that actually was an outgrowth of teachers asking us for that information and so we had for years provided curriculum pacing guides and in some ways it may have felt like a choose your own adventure and by kind of narrowing that for teachers and showing them particularly elementary teachers you teach a lot of subjects across the school day here's how you can fit them together and make it work together and so we have gotten a lot of positive feedback on that i would say teachers run the gamut just like all the rest of us some of them are like this is great i love it and others are like oh not so much but it's our goal to make sure we're meeting all teachers where they're at and providing a lot of opportunities because we are in schools every single day with every teacher the way principals are which is where that strong connection is really necessary Thank you.

Thank you so much. I'm glad to hear about the teacher feedback. And the next question I have is how does our ESL literacy? Are we using 95% for that? I don't know how to teach children how to read or how to teach someone who it's not the first language how to read. But are we using evidence based practices when it comes to

making that big leap so our students who are multilingual learners are first general education students and so they get all of the core content instruction which includes the 95 group it is different to learn to read if you are literate in your first language if you're not literate your first language if your first language is a Latin letters and sounds if it's something else. However, what we have seen and we saw a lot of growth, especially with our newcomers who were using it, is English is very sight and sound based and the rules change, right? We used to say I before E except after C, all of those things. And this actually unlocks for them a way to decode English that we didn't necessarily have before. So the benefits. are for all students it's certainly there's never going to be one single bullet that's going to work for all students all the time but we are seeing that there's um positive for those for students who are not um are not monolingual english speakers

I'm back on slide for a question about goal three what are the district benchmark assessments for reading and math which which tests are those it's the star and the star early literacy and the star early literacy and then the star reading and second grade and beyond and then star math. Thank you.

Good evening. Great presentation. My question centers around the way you evaluate the programs. You spoke of various programs, quite a few. And I can't honestly say that I understand exactly all of the various programs, but what I want to do as someone in the community, I want to understand what the teachers, how they're evaluated, what their thoughts are. Is there a think tank where we can go, even just as the public, to see what teachers are thinking or how they feel about the various programs? An honest opinion from the teachers.

So our teachers do complete climate survey every year. And some of the questions on there ask them about how they feel about their work environment and their different pieces. When our teaching and learning team works to update any of their resources, they bring in teachers from all of the different schools to get their feedback before we put out new changes. But I like this idea of having like a teacher think tank. We don't just have one think tank where we ask, like one group of teachers about all the things, but we'll look into that.

Yes, because I noticed that since there's been a lot of conversation about school closures, I've heard more from a lot of teachers that i've had that i've heard in a long time and so it's just critical to me as someone who's tasked with decision making to know what the people who are on the front line are thinking about the various programs and things that we might have to vote on so i hope that we get that think tank going real soon

And that is super important to us. We do get teacher feedback on the individual pieces and components, like our CTE programs have advisory boards that include teachers, but we haven't had one like overall for the academics division. So thank you.

All right, thank you.

Board Member Harvey.

Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Dr. Dean, for the presentation. I'll start with the first bucket of questions, which is the observation and coaching infrastructure is great. It's high activity and quite enormous. From what I gathered, like 2,000 plus principal observations, 700 plus network observations, 3,000 plus coaching cycles. And what I'm curious to hear about that the presentation did not say is what those observations are telling us about where we are exemplar in tier one instruction. It mentioned that it's a priority area, but it doesn't say where the highlights actually happened after that enormous of coaching. Second to that is what share of classrooms by division. So if I understand a network superintendent model, three or four pre-K eights in a high school. So I'm curious by division, what share of classrooms are actually meeting the look for standards? And if you were to send me into a classroom a month into the school year, what school am I going into? What classroom am I going into to see exemplar instruction at the tier one level? And then how will the board see quality signals move over the year? And I recognize that MAP data is lagging, et cetera. So I'm just curious, what is the board supposed to look at to see that there is actual movement happening with such an enormous coaching infrastructure and a lot of adults participating in the process?

Thank you, those are all really great questions. Our infrastructure in terms of tracking the feedback as it related to specifically the principal feedback when they went in for teacher observations last year, was I would say rudimentary in terms of being able to pull the type of big high level reports that you are speaking of. And that is why we're moving and doing that in the kick up. Now we have it was it was honestly a spreadsheet. Everyone was typing individually into a spreadsheet last year. So we've moved into a vein where we're going to be able to pull higher level reports on things the teaching and learning team is also. We developed the look for as they were very individual last year, the principal and the network or the principal learning that they would go in together as a team, and it was about like the individual teacher growth. We are now starting to use the same information, but to go in and gather just fidelity implementation fidelity. data to show for us. What are we looking at across the board? What are the things that we need to do more of in terms of instructionally? And to your point, where do we see some really high level instruction happening so that we can send other people there to see it as well? And so That's a pivot that we're making in terms of being able to capture it, not just like teacher by teacher, but at the bigger level for this year. My hope is that as we get into kick up more, we're going to be able to pull some reports and share some really aggregate data. Both internally with the academic team so that we can make adjustments and externally with the board as well.

If I can reiterate, too, which is that, like, what share of classrooms would you say by division are exemplar classrooms? And I recognize, I appreciate individual look for stuff, and I appreciate that it was just a spreadsheet, which is...

It was a place to start.

Sure.

It's not a place to finish.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm just, I'm curious, right, even if it's a noncommittal data point,

so when i will speak from my experience in visiting the classrooms for 95 specifically because when desi comes and does visits for our conference of schools which they do at least two times a year and if they decide they're going to come back for a third time then they come back a third time that's the thing they've asked us to always go in and look for so i'm always on those visits with those people i would say at the start of the year We were probably like a quarter of the classrooms implementing the big parts of the, they call them the big rocks within the look fors. By the midpoint and the end of the year, I would say three quarters of the classrooms were hitting those particular big rocks. If you were to ask me about our new science implementation that we did last year, I don't have firsthand experience with enough classrooms to say what the share of that would look like.

Got it. You are using the new ones, which is helpful, which is it was an implementation not necessarily quality fidelity impact if they're doing it i want to make sure no it was there was a fit there was a rubric around like it was low like one two three low mid high fidelity to the different pieces of the big rocks for implementation and 75 approximately were three by the time i went back to see them later in the year yep and then my last and i promise i'm sorry for my colleagues um i know 95 group has that like those embedded

screeners and like a progress monitoring something are we using that in order to be able to show like how our students are making progress on that bondage continuum so we are definitely starting to use that this year that's part of their kind of tier two packaging and um what ms hubbard said earlier about teachers being overwhelmed we didn't want to ask classroom teachers to do both the tier one and right away start the tier two at the same time so it's been a layered um roll out of those pieces but yes we do have some schools that did i would say piloted those last year and they found that when they were really tracking kids on those individual skill sets that there were kids who then were able to make really big jumps and they could see that in that time we were doing that across more all elementary schools this year and so we'll be able to have some more data and that it also was a paper pencil test previously but they are they have opened up a dashboard this year so we should be able to pull reports at a larger level

Can the board be provided the pilot classroom data immediately? And then can we get data progressively throughout the academic year as it's implemented so that we can track progress? Thank you.

Board member Hikes.

Slide 4 on the attendance code, we see, I guess, last year Thank you, sir. Last year was 52.5%. What processes do you think we'll be using to get that up to 82% if possible?

That's a really great question. We are working to support our school teams. We've had attendance teams who've looked at data for a long time, but we really need to focus on what are we doing with the information that we have. And so our attendance teams have been or being trained on some protocols, especially through attendance works, which is an organization that has a lot of really good research-based attendance components. How are we tracking what our home visits look like? We do expect that if a student is not in school, they're getting a phone call every single day. In the past, we've been doing letters. Parents will send their kids when they know that we really want them there. And our incentives for them are not buying candy and cookies. Our incentives for them need to be highly engaging instruction. If students really want to come to school, they will make sure that they get there. And so those are some of the just some of the things we're working on. We haven't had an attendance goal in our school improvement plans for a few years. And I think, too, by having the actual attendance goal in the plan, we'll also focus more attention and efforts at the school level. The reason for the 30% increase is if we want to get our APR points, we need to be up over 80%. And right now we're not getting any points because we're not high enough to receive them.

So the attendance is not based on Our bus is not getting there.

No.

It's not based on that.

I would say, well, for some students, transportation is an issue. We had on-time arrival with our buses last year and running routes to a much higher extent than we did the year before that. We can say that that is not the key driver in our students not attending school every day.

So how do you monitor what's going on? Who are we holding accountable for?

documenting this and then providing the motivation incentives and reporting out that it has improved so each school will have an attendance team and within each team they will identify who on that team is best served to kind of serve as the lead facilitator our school social workers are the ones who are i would say tasked with reporting out to families if they're not coming on time but that's not the That's an end goal. We actually want them to come there before those letters have to get sent out. And it's the school principal who can pull the reports. Part of what we have I think nicely now in focus is they can pull the different, they can pull attendance reports to see how close they are, where they're going. Last year we had a lot of new, right? We had new focus that we rolled out on the first day. We had new Zoom that we rolled out on the first day. Our schools are getting, I would say, more accustomed and attuned to using the systems that we have. And we have better systems electronically to capture what we need. It does take the school, the classroom teacher, too, to say, oh, I missed Allison in class today. Where is she? How is she doing? So those are some of the, I would say, some of the pieces that we're doing in terms of the personal touch that maybe before we were relying on kind of the automated robocalls or the automated letters to go home.

And you mentioned reaching the percentage that the State Department expects us to get to. What are the things for the benefit of our audience and the board members who are not tied into education in that aspect, or the goals that we're trying to reach? so for example you talked the board member marston asked about our math and how we were assessing our math students and what's the goal for that and what have we reported out and how do you think our test scores are coming back now so our academic goals are to increase the numbers of student numbers using number of schools that reach the apr 70

a couple of years ago we had six during the school year 24 we had seven and then we will later in november get the report out for school year 25 which we just finished so we're hoping to grow in that area you earn points for a lot of different things we had we can really make up some of our gaps by getting more status points and you get more status points by having more students reach proficiency and part of reaching we can't reach proficiency if we're not teaching grade level content i would say that is something that we are really focusing heavily on if students are not exposed to grade level content there's no way we can expect them to meet the grade level standard so status points growth points we have some schools that made a lot of growth points for the high schools it's those end of course exams we've had right our social studies actually is our highest percent proficient of our um eoc exams and it's still right around like 30 and so we need to increase those pieces more it's just a lot of different moving parts attendance is one component but it's not the only component thank you board member jones and then harvey

This question is related to a subject that Mr. Hikes brought up. It's in regards to parental participation when it comes to attendance. And I'm trying to understand where are we holding parents responsible in the attendance record because the students can't do this on their own and the schools can't. I mean, we can ask you to get your child there, but how do we ask, have some type of written document and ask parents to sign up, or are we offering them some type of assistance to get to school with their children? Because it seems as if the parents are not really being asked like they should be to participate more.

So all of our parents are asked to sign the student code of conduct every year, which includes information about attendance and what our expectations are for attendance. We do and schools work tirelessly to try to get parents to come to school our counselors reach out our social workers reach out our teachers, our principals call we make home visits. We do endeavor to do the things you are speaking up to break down whatever barriers are necessary, sometimes we have conversations with families about. We let every family choose the school basically that they want to attend if they go through the magnet process and go through that. But if they choose a neighborhood school that's outside their neighborhood zone, they don't get transportation. They have to provide their own transportation because that's our policy. So if my student is attending a school outside my neighborhood school zone, and it's my responsibility to get my student there every single day, and I'm not doing that, my principal is talking to me. Maybe you should go to your neighborhood school because maybe the barrier is transportation such that you would be better served going to a school close to your home. So those are some of the conversations that we do have with families.

I really thought it was open because she was going to support her step. I didn't realize she was.

I just want to make a comment, a question regarding you asked about the piloting for 95% schools. I know we provided a presentation to the board in the past. We can certainly get that information back up. But I do want to know, and we can talk later about what additional questions you might have around the pilot program. make sure we're clear on the ask to give you what you need and then secondly we were going to invite every Monday last year the cabinet we did visits to schools to look at 95% in classrooms and so we were already planning to ask board members to join us on a few visits this year to actually go in classrooms and so the questions around like what to look for thank you so we'll make sure we get that and get the invites out for you to come join us

of course and the it was just dr dino said that a couple classrooms implemented the tier two so i wanted to see the data from their implementations that they already did it and then track that this year yeah my question and i've two that you know one is for the future which is we we use portrait of a graduate a lot verbally and the seven attributes but i i mean i'm intrigued that the accountability goals attendance proficiency apr school climate center i don't quite I don't quite get the connectional tissue every time we talk about portrait of a graduate and the instructional strategy that's building that actual human. And so we read these seven things off and then we don't have any strategy that I can put my finger on, like how each of these is gonna materialize in the adult that we send out into the world. So I'd just love to hear more about it.

Sure. So we can get you some examples, too.

That'd be helpful.

But within, like, all of our curriculum documents, we are connecting for teachers. Like, this is an example of critical thinking that you can lay out for your students. This is an example of collaboration. At one of our schools, they have students create, like, a portrait of a graduate portfolio that they collect over the time that they're at that. that particular school, but from a district perspective, we're drawing the connections for teachers directly, and I hear you that we're not drawing it enough explicitly here.

Yeah, or for families. It's the loudest promise we make at every meeting. We read these things off, and how can a family be sure that we're building that human? My last question, and no offense, I would love to hear from a network superintendent.

That's fine.

No offense. I'd just love to hear a couple pressure points i love highlight presentations but there's always something happening under the water and i'd love to hear from a few by grade divisions around like what are the legitimate pressure points in this strategy that we're trying and like where are we not going the distance from their vantage point um and like what do they want us to do about the distance that we're not going that's right

If I may just ask my question before we switch gears and then we can. I just wanted to get base numbers for goals one, two, three. You mentioned the first base number was to increase from six to nine from 2024 to 2027. But base numbers for goals two and three.

yeah we have a whole chart that did not fit on the slide which is why i imagine put that on here and i um can get that absolutely right to you it just didn't fit on here today but we have a whole chart for them but you don't have it today i don't have a right in front of me right this second but i can

when i sit down i can get it thank you compile all of this in uh different segments but give it to the entire board so that we can kind of look at it across the board yeah wilson yeah we'll send to miss bond so that you all get it thank you thank you all right

Good evening, I am Shamika Humphrey, one of the network superintendents serving elementary schools. And so your question I heard, you said, what are the pressure points? Yep.

So I would say- And what do you want us to do about them?

board like uh okay so i would say one of the pressure points um would be in our literacy we know that literacy is really important it's one of our it's one of our goals is one of our core priorities and so when you think about literacy it's really important that schools have like a comprehensive literacy program that has all the things the phonics the reading comprehension the writing And currently in our elementary schools, we have 95%, that's meaning the phonics, because our current literacy program did not have the comprehensive phonics program embedded in it, right? And so we noticed that over the years, and so I am really happy that we did adopt 95% phonics instruction because as a kindergarten teacher, foundational literacy is critical to students being successful, right? And then it also, the writing component is also lacking. And even the reading comprehension piece is there, but it has some gaps. And so, as you know, we are piloting literacy programs. And so I'm really looking forward to the outcome of these literacy programs. I'm hoping that we really do find at least one of the programs that really does provide that comprehensive literacy instruction. So our teachers will be implementing the 95 percent phonics instruction along with the phonics piece that is embedded within the different programs that we are piloting. The goal ultimately should be that everything that they need is right there so the teachers don't have to piecemeal things together to provide students with a comprehensive literacy instruction. And so as the data comes forward, as we're piloting these programs across our schools, the support would be really just backing the data and ensuring that both our teachers and our students have what they need to succeed and thrive.

I'm Dr. Bailey, I support the middle school level and I have to ditto a lot of what Dr. Humphrey said, especially around 95% at the middle level. 95% at the middle level is a little different with our multisyllable and our morpheme magic. That's when the vocabulary changes for our students. That's when we start to know that the academic vocabulary becomes a little bit more difficult. And so for me, when I think about the middle school work moving forward, it's definitely going to need your support in understanding and providing just some support with 95% and what that looks like at the middle school level. I think come visit some of the classes. Come see 95 in action at the middle school level to see that it is a need to advance our students in literacy along with all the other content areas. So science vocabulary, math vocabulary, social studies. It's not just an ELA program. It is a tier one program across the board for our students to be successful.

Good evening i'm Isaac pollock and the high school network superintendent. I think, as we think about the high schools it's similar, but a little bit different, and I would I would summarize it as equity of access to academic rigor. So we have lots of different high schools that have lots of different levels of rigor in them. and even within high schools. And so that means that if you take honors biology at one school, you're not necessarily getting the level of rigor of an honors biology at a different school. if you have one school that students are engaged in complex high school, college level texts and exciting texts that they're inspired by and not just worksheets and whatever else is in. And we're not necessarily seeing that at all of our schools. And so I think what we're pushing for, what you're gonna hear over and over about the high schools is no matter where you go, how are you having access to that high level of rigor wherever you are? So I think that's what we're pushing on this year.

And Dr. Kitson is going to just share to your question, Dr. Collins-Adams, about what do we expect in terms of growing for MSIM 6. And to Dr. Harvey's question about some data, she wants to share some information about how those pilot schools did with their growth points last year on the map.

Got it. Thank you. So I feel compelled to say, first of all, I absolutely believe that this district is focusing on the right thing. Literacy is absolutely at the heart of equity. If students can't read, it doesn't open the door for anything else. So this phonics program itself, right, we do know that programs don't teach kids how to read. It's the teachers utilizing the program. And when we say it's a script, this is a piece that, just like I said, I want to jump up and say it is the research-based instructional language. So it's not just a script. There's been research behind when you say these things in this order, we are going to get the results. Another thing about 95 I just have to say is the efficacy rating is one of the highest on SS so this isn't right SLPS, this is a very independent study because, of course, many times curriculum they do their own studies. But then the most powerful piece are the four schools that initiated it first, you know, Dr Dino mentioned the growth in status. We know that our growth points have just as much importance as our status. Those four schools, three of them reached 100% of their growth goals. They surpassed what the state expected them. That doesn't mean they were proficient and advanced. 100% in all categories, in all of our groups. 100%, three of the schools. And then the fourth school, made 75% growth that they have never seen that much growth. And again, that's the growth. We can't reach status until we're reaching that growth piece first. That means kids are actually growing from their, even if they're below basic, they're still growing from below basic, maybe from within their band. So I just wanted to share the piece about it's not, scripted it truly is that instructional language that is um it's it's research based and then the growth was pretty substantial we have some preliminary data i know we can't share but those goals those schools i think we're going to be very pleased i think now it's having an impact um on now their growth and their status so to come, I can't wait to share and celebrate the impact.

Can I just say, I fully support 95%. And some of this conversation feels like you're trying to evangelize me. I have nothing against those people's program. It is a perfectly fine program.

Those people we know.

No, it's a perfectly fine program.

It has been well supported. I get it. My question is just all about that our children improving can anybody read better today than they could read yesterday so you do not have to evangelize at least me no on 90 so i would love future conversations to be a little less loving and more uh rigorous about what we're doing because you got us so we already bought the thing we just we just need to unpack it with like what is it doing for for children

No, I very much appreciate that. And we didn't ask them to love on it for you. I think what you're hearing is that it is something that they see making a difference in classrooms. And I am excited for you to be able to come in and see it. And we do have, like I said, data from the previous year that we're. And then when we're able to share this year, I hope we're going to be able to share lots of great information too.

I know we're just going on and on on this, but I do have to say this. It did come up in my mind after Dr. Pollack, I believe, said what he said about rigor and academics. We have to teach students how they learn. but we also have to monitor how teachers teach. There's a big difference between the way teachers teach and what students learn and how students learn what teachers are teaching. So we don't concentrate and put a lot of effort on what's happening in a classroom, how that teacher is teaching the students, and allow other teachers to share their knowledge, find some cross paths so that we can get everybody to be able to improve in some way. If it's about energy or academics or resources and we need to share amongst each other because we can't have rigor. We'll look differently everywhere we go though. So I think that's really important because not all students learn the same way. Not all teachers teach the same. And we can't expect them to.

board member hubbard your mic is on and then anyone else and then we'll move on to the next section um this is a smattering of a collection of comments that occurred while other questions were being asked and answered um we did go to our neighborhood school it was 0.3 miles away we were still late sometimes but it was such a relief to know that it was you know 10 minutes walking two minutes by car And I want to strongly endorse that idea for every parent in the district, which hopefully we're moving towards that anyway. I also wanted to say that the college resource fair really helped my child start to, was it the resource fair? one the college fair that's all it was um it really helped my child start to understand and think about college as something um a pathway that she can choose and i really appreciate that so special thanks to everyone who worked on that i think that's all thank you we'll let you off the hook now dr barry

long session while she's walking to the microphone everybody stand up and stretch i know i could pardon me good evening last week we did present

the data of how we implemented our sessions, our engagement sessions. And so we talked about what that looked like in the makeup. And so this week we're going to talk about key findings, community feedback, and next steps. So I'm gonna ask Chief Mitchell, she's gonna come up and talk about the data and how we were able to capture that and what that said to us and the next steps. So Chief Mitchell's over our technology and accountability department.

Good evening. Tonight's presentation brings together community feedback, key findings, and next steps for Future Ready SLPS. The goal is to show what we heard, how the feedback was analyzed, and then how it will inform the next phase of planning. Future Ready SLPS is grounded in our broader district vision, preparing students to be college and career ready, critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators, and change agents. The portfolio work is not separate from that vision. It is one way we align our schools, programs, facilities, and resources to better support the portrait of a graduate. This work also connects directly to the district's core four priorities attendance literacy finance and operations, a stronger school portfolio must create the conditions for students to attend consistently receive better stronger instruction. learn and safe and well maintained buildings and benefit from a more sustainable use of our district resources. So the development, we're going to kind of go on a journey here. So we're going to talk about how we develop the document, how we got our feedback from the community, and then what does that mean for next steps? So the development of the future ready SLPS portfolio model. We developed this using a structured evidence informed multi criteria approach. The work, this is the most critical thing, the work did not begin with the list of schools to close. It began with an affirmative question. Which schools and configurations provide the strongest foundation for students, families, programming, and long-term sustainability? So again, we approach this from an affirmative lens. What school is the best school in this situation? The team examined feeder patterns, capacity, facility conditions, location, and programming needs. High schools, so we did a backwards planning situation, high school served as the anchor, and then elementary, middle, and pre-K to eight pathways were then examined in relationship to these anchors. Any proposed closures, reconfigurations, or repurposing followed that initial portfolio design. It was not the starting point. And then what we want to lift up as part of this planning process is this is what transparency looks like in a training, in a planning process. Um, as we all know, the sunshine laws of Missouri, if we email talk, there's no drafting period, anything can be public. And so what we wanted to do was share what we were planning and every phase of that planning with the public. So that's what we did first. And then we pivoted to the community and stakeholder engagement. So after we published the initial document, we then moved into this engagement. And so this next section of the presentation summarizes who participated, what feedback was collected, and then the major patterns that emerge across our different stakeholder groups. Engagement included three in-person community meetings, a school leader session, an online reflection form available to everyone, and then an ESOL family meeting. These opportunities were designed to collect both structured feedback and then open-ended perspectives from families, staff, leaders, and community members. The purpose of the analysis is to bring the feedback sources together in one place. It looks at participation, recurring themes, model selection patterns, and planning implications. One important note is this is not a statistically representative survey or a final vote, but it does provide a meaningful view of our stakeholder perspectives. So how the data was analyzed we analyze using both quantitative and qualitative methods we counted responses and model selections by source, but we also reviewed open ended comments from recurring themes we kept the sources separate rather than merging them as if they represented the same type of input. The engagement generated 289 Padlet posts. And just for the listening audience, Padlet is a platform in which you can digitally essentially just post open-ended posts. And that was the tool that we used. 93 community meeting forms. 92 website forms, 57 school leader forms, and then feedback from the 52 ESOL participants across eight language groups. Each source contributed something different. Immediate reactions, individual reflections, leader perspectives, online feedback, and interpreter facilitated family discussion. So the Padlet. The Padlet featured, the Padlet feedback captured open-ended reactions from three community meetings. The most frequent themes were closures and neighborhood stability, we heard that over and over, academic programming and opportunity, pre-K to eight safety and developmental fit, and then concerns about process, pace, and trust. Because Padlet posts are not unique participants, those counts should not be read as coded references. or should be read as coded references, not as individual votes. What you see here on the right side of the screen is just a snapshot of what the Padlet looked like. And I would say the Padlet was our most favorite type of feedback that we collected. The audience really seemed to like that. Would you prefer we held our questions to the end? It is totally up to you all. We will defer to the board.

I was just asking. You can continue. I'm sorry. Okay. I had a question. I can ask it. If this is a conversation. I mean, let's cut in here. Come on. I'm wondering.

Member Foster, go ahead.

Thank you, President Collins-Adams. Thank you. On the open response slide, it was the previous one that wasn't just...

Okay.

For most frequent coded things. I'm wondering, did we also track like sentiment across all those four main themes? And by sentiment, I mean like positive feelings, negative. How many were neutral?

You know, we can definitely go back through and do that. That's a great point. Just wondering. Okay. No, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. All right. Okay, the community reflection form, we had 185 total responses for this. The community, so this is, again, the three meetings that we engage with our community. They showed Model A selected most often for continued planning. Again, it wasn't a vote, it was which model we were looking at for continued planning. However, the written feedback shows that participants were not only choosing models, they were also raising concerns about school closures, transparency, financial stability, pre-K to eight design, student supports, and then trust in the process. School leader feedback looks different, interestingly so. School leaders selected Model B most often. As a district, we're essentially Model B right now. That's how our current portfolio is structured. Their comments also emphasize the need for clear rationale, attention to closure impacts, trust, pre-K to eight safety, financial sustainability, and then equitable access to resources. This is just a side-by-side. When we look at community and school leader responses, we can see the stakeholder groups weighed the trade-offs differently. Community respondents leaned more toward Model A, and then school leaders, of course, leaned a little bit more toward Model B. And then since we showed this data a few weeks ago, that initial data, we actually had another meeting. We had an ESOL family engagement meeting. And that added an important and very consistent perspective to the process. We had 52 participants represented across eight facilitated language tables. Across every table, families raised transportation, routes and walkability, pre-K to eight safety and developmental fit, and the importance of minimizing transitions for students and families. One particularly notable finding during the table share outs was when interpreters reported the feedback from the groups Every single language group indicated a preference for Model C, every single one, when they stood up and shared out. Families consistently connected that preference to fewer school transitions, greater convenience, and the ability for students and families to remain connected to familiar school staff and communities. This was overwhelmingly so. At the same time, their support for Model C did not mean that they didn't have any concerns. They had some similar concerns to the other groups. which is around transportation, safety across pre-K to eight model, and then neighborhood stability, academic programming, et cetera. And then just kind of a methodology note, because this feedback was collected through facilitated table discussions, the counts shown here represent the number of language tables, the ones you see on the list, where a theme was raised, rather than individual responses. And then what we heard so putting all this together, what do we hear across all groups several themes were consistent stakeholders understand the need for long term planning. But they were they want a clear school level rationale stronger supporting data and then confidence that implementation was thoughtful and will be thoughtful moving forward. The key takeaway is that stakeholders are evaluating both the portfolio direction and then our ability and promise to implement this successfully. And finally, what must be addressed next? The next phase must directly address the questions that our stakeholders raise, that's our responsibility and duty. That includes a rationale for individual schools moving forward, and then clear understanding of the transportation and access, facility readiness, right, if we're saying this is 27-28, what does that look like? And then implementation supports. This is where the work moves from, this broad models, kind of some planning phases into a more specific, transparent, and actionable plan. And so with that, Dr. Berry will talk about what's ahead.

Before you go, because that was something that board member Foster brought up that I just went back and looked at. So we would have, I'm going to make this up because I don't feel like pulling up another slide. 10% of the people coded for closures, but I don't know what that means.

Like I want it closed. I don't want it closed. I like it closed.

I don't know what that means.

we'll reconfigure that and get that to you because there was 289 posts. We had a lot of really powerful posts on that padlet. Absolutely. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. And do we plan on publishing that data like publicly anywhere, obviously anonymized as much as we can, but it's posted.

Those are public links. We have them actually on the website, all three of them. We did freeze them, um, after one week for each. So because they were connected to that specific meeting, but they are on the website right now.

Okay. Thank you. On that same. Just a reminder to with the palettes that it could be the same person giving multiple feedback, so it may not be comprehensive of if it's 20 palettes made a conference of 10 actual people, it could be one person responding 10 times.

Even though I'm curious about the coding protocol. and if it was internally designed and externally validated, or internally designed and internally validated, because the themes, same one, like academic programming and opportunity, vague, but would be helpful to think about like other social, best social science practices for coding, and then us not validating our own data. the folks were going to so i will be the people who made the survey or asked the question collected the information created the themes validated the coding to then say what people said they wanted but none of it was tested yeah thank you for that um maybe you can help us figure out what that would look like i say that because when we do have outsiders come in and code data or do

something then it's a question of they're making up their own data and where do they get that from and they are not here you know for the betterment of the district so we are open to suggestions that we think the public can stand behind because we've tried that all right we'll jump right back in the PowerPoint so what's ahead On August 17th, we'll be sharing this data also in another format on the 17th. So we open for engagement with the community, but it will be this data. We are not gonna go in depth other than what was shared. We'll have the updates, what was asked from the board. We'll make sure that's included, but we'll do that with the community on the 17th at Car Lane. Also on the 31st, by that time we have presented our proposal to the board. So we'll have a community meeting on the 31st and then again on the 10th and the 17th over the final proposal. But what we're finding most from this and what we're hearing what's most important are a couple of questions. What do we hear? What are we learning from the data? And what are we going to do differently because of both? And I think that last question is the most important question. What are we going to do differently? And because of this, engagement has been extremely meaningful. And if we can get people to understand that we do, we hear you, we hear you. And so we are listening, we are going back and we went back to the table. But as we move forward with the recommendation, we must also be able to identify what the community is saying and how we utilize that to make decisions moving forward. If we're going to refine it, protect something or do something differently. But that does not mean that every recommendation will reflect every individual preference. That would be impossible. But it does mean that every perspective deserves to be heard, considered, and weighed transparently against what is best for the district, but not individual schools or persons. We also have to recognize that there is a difference between listening and leading. Listening informs leadership, but it does not replace the responsibility to lead. Our responsibility is not simply to make the decision that creates the least discomfort today. Our responsibility is to make the decision that gives the district and our students the strongest future for tomorrow. We also have some upcoming board meetings. And so it is our intent at the next board meetings to present our updated proposal, which will be one model on the 25th. And then also we're going to share updates, because by then we would have had one community session. So we'll share updates from that community session on the 8th of September. We are planning to bring to you on the 22nd the final proposal for recommendation and then in October going to request board approval. That is the plan today. The board's decision will determine the footprint, but then our responsibility is to determine what is next and make sure we're delivering that promise. And so the next phase of Future Ready, which we've been hearing a lot and we're prepared now to talk about, the stronger academic programming and what that looks like, facilities moving forward and what those look like, improved safety, talking about expanding our extracurricular activities and then training for our staff, and then stronger in enhancing our college and career pathways. Because the Future Ready SLPS, students will be able to be stronger and have stronger access to what's happening in schools. Every year, our plan is to then come and publicly report out, here's what we promised, here's what we invested, here's what we changed, here's what the students have now that they did not have access to before, and there's work that we still have to do in acknowledging that. So now, after all the information that we collected and reviewing the data, we are taking back again what we heard from the community and examining and put that into the various models, and the team is now ready to make a recommendation on the portfolio model. And from everything that we heard, we would like to move forward with a A-plus model. You might say, what is an A-plus model? An A-plus portfolio model, it allows us to do a number of things. It allows us to keep the flexibility that we have where necessary, also making sure that we're not just simply redesigning the district to say that we redesigned. Our portfolio would remain primarily traditional with the elementary, middle, and high schools. Also, the structures will be familiar to families and provide clarity around transitions. But at the same time, we are not saying that one configuration works for everyone. A limited number of pre-K through eight schools will make sense, and the data has demonstrated that and supported that. a quick question of course i think i think you said an a plus model like slide 20 that i'm looking at says b plus yeah i think that's just the old side that the board may have it's an a plus model so on your link as a board you have a live link i believe i believe ms hubbard was actually looking at it earlier it's a plus model okay thank you yeah which is the same as the b plus but it sounds better to say a plus right we're an a-plus district so that's what happened yes the next step is to apply a weighted school level matrix it's important because we do not want to use just one individual recommendation and so tonight we are recommending the architectural structure for the future system and the next phase will allow us to look how individual schools are fitting into this architectural structure. So future ready is not about making every school the same. It is about making every school positioned to give the students what they need and what they deserve. And so the weighted school decision methodology, we heard that word a lot. And so when we again began this work, we were intentional on how we were planning and we were using this in the affirmative. which schools, programs, and configurations work best for our students and their needs and working backwards. So now that distinction is extremely important because now we're ready to talk about the schools that we're going to recommend and how we're going to recommend them and what that looks like. So moving forward with the weighted matrix, we will identify the individual schools that best supports the district, those that move forward, and those we're recommending for repurposing. The purpose is to validate, challenge, and refine anything that we may have seen and how we can move forward to support the district we began by identifying what we want to build now we are ready to validate what we must change and what we are going to do to make the future of this district possible So this slide right here in 2020 which I'm going to call him out. We were doing all of this planning and configuring and figuring out a methodology and the last board meeting the board said hey what is the methodology actually look like. There has to be some guidance. So we went back to the drawing board and Chief Watson said guess what. I have the methodology from 2020. And so we have been doing this all this work and he actually had a plan. But what I appreciate is we did not have this plan in the beginning. So when we compared it to what we were doing, it actually coincide of how we are actually planning. And so although our criteria that we're using is different from the criteria, when I say different, like the naming is different from what happened in 2020, some of the ways they collected data is the same. With an exception, if you're looking at that last, it talks about other specialized programs, that was given a weighted, that was given us automatic score for our magnet schools and specialized programs. So if you already had those, you were given points for that and so we are not going to utilize that in the same manner because we want to make sure that we're being equitable and how we are evaluating our schools that is all for the presentation but i'm sure there are questions i have one um

While we're preparing all of this, are we looking at what we're going to be able to, and when I say look at, I know we have plans that we've talked about all of our academic things that we're going to do, but what are the major plans to be able to say what we're going to be offering our students while we're doing this and certainly after. What's the big bang for the buck to be able to keep our students in St. Louis public schools? And it's something that must be motivating and intriguing to students. It's something that students would want to do. that they would enjoy doing that, would wake them up in the morning to send them to school, whether it's technology or an orchestra or a marching band or mandated field trips that every school is gonna have because we're gonna go to places that we haven't gone before. And I don't mean just a trip to the zoo and the museum. I'm talking about things that, experiences that will take them beyond their neighborhoods and their homes, okay? So what's the plan for that?

Yeah. And so I get asked that question. I think people want me to answer it, but it would be unjust if we did not include the staff. And so the plan is for staffing and students. So we were originally going to survey students when they came back. We're stepping back from that. And so now we're going to move towards the SAB, which is a Superintendent Student Advisory Committee. and we're gonna have that group and get together and focus on those questions. And then teachers, when they come back as well, well, they're back, but have a group to talk about what do they wanna see inside this plan. And then we're hoping to get that preview, and I wanna say committee, that preview group together to also have other information and input because it's not just Myra's plan, it's the district's plan, so I think it's very important. While I have an idea of what I'd like to see, we need to make sure that we're getting that feedback so we can stand behind this and say, This is what we believe is going to make a difference in our schools.

Dr. Berry, I've committed to attending board meetings and making decisions with my team members on this board and going to community meetings and working with any person that wants to be able to talk to Ms. Fantini, call me when we're done with this meeting, okay? I'm putting you on another committee. And we have things that we want to do. But I will give you, and Dr. Harvey knows we've already discussed this because I announced it earlier to him to just get a... i'll get a read on his face and demeanor and whatnot that is a good idea i'll give 100 to be able to get the public and this community to support any major effort that we have for students because the people and the parents and the businessmen in the st louis community That doesn't mean that it's only in the city of St. Louis, but there are people in surrounding areas that have major funds that want to see this city survive. And the only way for this city to survive is to watch our children grow. And to have our children grow, they need to be able to do things that they enjoy. So I would put myself out there. I'll pound the pavement. I'll meet with everyone. I will ask. I'm not afraid of asking you to whip out that checkbook. Put your money where your mouth is. But I have to have something that we're going to do so that their money goes to good use. And I want to start with, what are we going to do? If we get that student group together, that would be phenomenal. But we need to do it quickly so that we are presenting this with our plan for school closures. The other thing is we also need to get our student representatives on the board. And we need to institute that. We didn't have it last year. We need to start that at the minute school opens and our students return to school, our seniors are back. So thank you very much. Dr. Haney. The microphones are on, so I don't know who turned them on first, Ms. Jones and then Ms. Hubbard and then Dr. Hardy. And then Mr. Morrison, if you could take it in that order, thank you.

In relation to the question that she just raised, for years we had Babatou here. And he talked so many years about utilizing the television station upstairs to train students on how to become reporters. And we were asking that we have reporters in every school as well so that our students will learn how to communicate with one another. get in the regular student not just the straight-a student will have access to communication tools but the thing that bothers me right now with the whole plan is that and I also talked about us not having signs or digital or information that people will understand what's going on in each building. Just say, for instance, like I said before, we're passed by Clyde C. Miller. And there are a lot of wonderful programs that are going on inside of that building. But who knew? Who would know? It's just a big, giant brick building. It looks nice and everything from the outside. But what do we know? And then we have our building right there at Arsenal. in king's highway we have all those wonderful programs going on in there we have so i'm just asking when we ask when we're asking people and start talking about closing schools what are we actually going to be asking them what are we closing so vashon what kind of programs are happening at vashon who knew who knows i don't know every program and i'm a board member Who knows what's going on at Roosevelt? We need to know every program at Gateway. We went there and we went in the back and we saw the drone program. We saw the EMT program. We saw all kind of fabulous programs, but who knows? And so when we're saying we're going to offer better resources and tools then, we can see the difference. But right now, we can't tell anything. We really can't. So let's make that happen. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that.

So actually, I can send you. It seems like it's my computer. I had Dr. Archer, who was over Help me out. Thank you. Performance management. Lost it. I had him at the end of last year do an inventory of every single school in the district. And we did an inventory of every program, every activity, every volunteer that came in the building. So I have, it's a whole spreadsheet with every school. So I do have that that I can certainly share. And then your last one, you asked us about having the signs, and so we immediately jumped on that. Chief Watson, we actually have a couple signs that have been ordered for schools, but right now the city has put a block on it, and so I don't know what the rationale is. Chief Watson, feel free to come share if you want to, but we do not have the permits, and they're not allowing us to put the signs, the electrical signs in the yards to show what's happening in the schools. So we're trying to work with the city to see how we can get past those roadblocks to have that.

when you say it we try to make it happen especially to the essential children well thank you i really do want to see every school advertise what they're doing because our students are proud of their achievements and we need to highlight the students as well as the teachers thank you i think i'm next and i feel like you could will be able to guess my questions um

There's a lot of research that's, not a whole lot, but there is some research. There's journal articles and stuff out there. And we talk about research-based things all the time. And I know, I'm a grad student, I can go look them up myself. But it would be great to see that the district has processed the information that's out there, what best practices are, what you know how soon change happens and how long it takes for people to be happy about change um all of those things they i know at least some of them is out there and it would be great to have that as you know one of your sources of data and then also we have 17 000 children in the district and our responses are tiny and we know you know, at least from my emails, I know that most of them are from a handful of schools and they're not schools in North City. And I don't know if we need to, I mean, I'll go to North City and ask questions, but we need to know that everyone is informed and that we're hearing from everyone because we're not right now. And of the people that we disappoint with our plans, i would like north city to be the most happy um that's what would help make things right and we don't know if we are not hearing back from them or if we're not going to seek them out if we're doing you know the timing of our meetings or something we need to make sure that we're connecting with that area the schools that you know are on the list for closure those neighborhoods um if you want me to i'll go out there i love asking questions uh i'll go ride the bus and ask questions but we that is a missing piece right now that i really need to see thank you i can't tell you the bishan meeting we had a high number of turnout

And so those families, they reach out, they do talk, but they were present, it made me happy, but we can certainly see what that looks like. And thank you for bringing up the point about the timing. Every resource that we have looked at, it shows that the longer you prolong a change, the harder it is, and the sooner you can get the change implemented, the easier it is on everyone, but we'll make sure we include that.

So I have a few questions, but not to be answered tonight necessarily, but as you prepare for the community presentations and the board. The first bucket of questions, Dr. Berry, are really going to be around a transportation equity analysis now that you're landing on A-plus. i asked this when we talked about the healthy start times and my question now is i want to like double down which is stress testing routes stress testing ride times and start times a good number of my family small groups at every community session were really confused about the four mile It wasn't tracking for people with clarity. And so I can see a world where that creates angst if we don't have a clear plan. I'm particularly interested in what the student support service strategy is with this. I think about the fact that we take for granted often the resilience of children, but there's a high amount of grief attached to this plan. And I would love for us to just be really proactive about how we're thinking through pre-mortem with young folks who are going to be transitioning. Chicago taught us in 2013, 2014, with massive failure, young people going into neighborhoods they've never been into before, people having to go into parts of the region they've never been into before, and the district not having a clear plan of building bridges of support. Chicago, Cleveland's currently going through with the number of students experiencing homelessness, skyrocketed enclosure plans across the country. What's our strategy for closing the gap? So that's a bucket of questions. Next bucket of questions is the net savings per closure. We have talked about the transportation savings as an isolated bucket, but I would love to see per closure what the net recurring savings is because I think the like unburied lead is the only way you get to massive savings as personnel. And eventually we need to have that hard conversation. So I would love to see how this is moving us in the direction of our deficit closing. That's that bucket. And then the last is really around like human resources and a combination of like retention strategy for our highest performing exemplars who we need to take this journey with us. And obviously, it's going to have to be a non-cash retention strategy. But high love.

If you're in comprehensive schools, it might have something for you.

Come on. I love it. We'll have to see that. And what is the plan when you merge schools around adult culture? Adults become very territorial. and we call it positive culture when everybody like each other, but you combine those two groups who really liked each other in isolation and they now have to navigate new rules of engagement, are we getting in front of the tensions that might rise from those mergers and a clear plan for like what adult leader is the stabilizing force of those adult groups making sense of one another? And then my footnote question there is We have network superintendents, coaches, all the layers. And then we're contracting. So what's the ratio we're aiming for, for how many principals or whatever can be coached by a single human? How are we testing their capacity against the contraction? So you can give me a lot of questions. But at this point, if you're landing on a model of any kind, then I would not want to see a model that does not have a very clear operations plan attached to it, even if it has to change. Because the vote in isolation of operations plan is not going to go very far from my seat. And so those are some things I want to add.

Thank you. And please send any additional. We can get those. So you actually, internally, we have been working on that. Student Support Services created a wonderful one-pager, because we knew staff were coming back this week, a wonderful one-pager about the services that we're providing and the wraparound services for staff. And so we also have that for students. So all of this will be easily accessible, because we've been working on it. So we can get that and make sure it's in the plan as well. But thank you for those thoughtful questions.

I think I'm up. I have a mix of comments and questions. And like Dr. Harvey, I don't need answers tonight, but I'd just like to have you consider them as you prepare for other meetings. No one here wants to close schools, but it's necessary to get to where we want to be. And what I'm trying to do, what we're all trying to do, is keep SLPS from failing academically and financially. that's where we're headed if we continue to spread money people programs and services across 62 buildings so at the high school level the school size is predicted in appendix D of the preview document result in the following utilization rates which you calculate the utilization rate by dividing enrollment by the building capacity so it's a measure of how full the building is Vachon, and this is after Future Ready, so Vachon, 31%, Sumner, 60%, Soldan, 54%, Gateway, 42%, and Roosevelt, 42%. So two ways to improve the low utilization rates of our very large high school buildings are to consolidate some of them or to move to a 6 through 12 grade level model by adding the middle school students to those high school buildings. Middle school students already change classes for different subjects the same way that high school students do. conveniently use the same size toilets and furniture. So unlike putting a pre-K student in with an eighth grader, you don't have to reconfigure the building in that way. I'm also wondering how sunsetting McKinley High School improves academics, enhances the student experience, or saves money. In other words, what's gained by closing the high school while keeping the middle school still open in the same building? And I also had transportation questions. Elementary school students are expected to walk one mile to school, but only 0.3 miles to a bus stop. So I'm wondering why those distances aren't equal. And I'm also wondering why the transportation eligibility requirements are different for specialized pathway schools, because it seems to have the effect of making those schools less accessible.

I can't answer that question. And so when we looked at the data, which we know some parents have shared in our community sessions, most of the families that were taking transportation to the specialized pathways live more than four miles. Those that live closer were not utilizing the transportation. A couple of parents said it's not because we don't want to, it's because the transportation's not reliable, which is causing us to go back to reassess what does that actually look like, but that's how we got to the four miles. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Berry. I'm just reading my stuff right now. Okay, sorry. Are we ready for public comment?

all right good evening to our superintendent and to all the leadership on the board i will stand there for my teammate mr rhino jackson who was currently not with us this evening for our public comment um for the hearing pleasure of the audience i will give you the protocols for our public comment and then i will call up our nine public commentees that we have for this evening so out of respect for our board members and their mission to conduct district business by maintaining order and rules of the quorum, we will continue to enforce guidelines for public comments, and they are as follows. Citizens interested in commenting will sign in on the iPad between 6 and 6.30 PM before the board meeting. Do not hand documents directly to board members. Give them to the secretary, Ms. Vaughn, who's at the end of the dais. Commenters may take an available seat in the room, and there will be up to 20. Public comments will occur at the time designated by the board in the agenda published ahead of each board meeting. Information can be submitted to the board in writing. Each commenter will have up to three minutes to address the board. No speaker shall engage in any illegal or criminal activity. No speaker shall use obscene language. No speaker shall engage in conduct that will possess a true threat or disruption. There will be time allotted for all comments in accordance with Board Policy B9358.3. If you are not called to speak, you might submit your information in writing or return to the next scheduled meeting with a priority number. If the allotted comment period is inadequate for the number of registered commentary, the Board may, in its discretion, extend the commenting period or may require that an organization or group with multiple individuals desiring to speak on the same topic identify an individual to present the comments on behalf of the group or organization. The Board may also, in its discretion, limit the number of individuals speaking on the same topic on a first-come, first-served basis based on the order in which the individual signed up to speak on that topic. If any such requirement is imposed, it must be applied uniformly to all individuals and groups commenting. Having set the protocol, our first speaker will be Mr. Joe Sittle from Express Transport. He will hand some documents to Miss Tiffany that he would like the board to have during his commentary.

As you mentioned, my name is Joe Sittle. I'm with Express Transport Care, a local Saint Louis non emergency transportation company with 50 company owned vehicles right here in the community. I want the board to know something important about this cooperative being used for bringing in EverDriven and Via. This cooperative Omni partners require all vendors to operate nationally. That means no local St. Louis company can ever qualify, ever. And here's why EverDriven and Via operate nationally. They don't own a single vehicle. They recruit independent drivers using their personal cars, just like Uber. No company fleet, no guaranteed safety equipment, no guarantee on the vehicles showing up for the student. As you guys see financial records, there's a lot of costs in payroll taxes and health insurance and vacations and time off. You pay for all this. These companies don't pay any of that. They just share probably 20, 25 to 40% of the revenue coming in. They don't do any of that. Express Transport Care owns every vehicle. Everyone has cameras, fire extinguishers, first aid kits. Our drivers are employees, not giga workers. They're trained monthly what to deal with McKinney-Vento, and I do a lot of SSD. 80% of my trips deal with students. We have 50 vehicles, a local dispatch center, and Creeve Corps, and we are ready for August 24th, the first day of school. We believe St. Louis students deserve a local option. That's all I'm asking for tonight. Thank you. Any questions? Short. No? Okay, sorry.

Our next speaker, Mr. Brook Jabrouw and his representative from MetroCab.

Good evening board board president members of the board and the superintendent very my name is attorney having Abraham the general counsel for metropolitan tax cap company. And I'm asking you for one thing, pull item 6.19 from consent agenda and laid over for 30 days. For 23 years, Metropolitan has carried this district's children under contracts. This board is awarded by sealed bid. On May 1st of this year, your director of transportation contacted Metropolitan and informed uh inform metropolitan that they would not be renewing the district would not be renewing the um the the contract and offered an opportunity to bid three days later metropolitan accepted uh in writing and that was 99 days ago no bid packet has ever come metropolitan is not as aware of no published advertisement not once in in 20 In 23 years, has this district raised any deficiencies with Metropolitan Service? Not one. And tonight, $3,302,000 of public money sits on your consent agenda headed to two vendors in a single line with no vote of its own. Board Policy 3312. I'm sorry 3321 is your own law and it says that this district purchases when this district purchases services exceeding 50,000 bids shall be collected in a sealed bid process that was adopted in 1990 and by this board in 2022. This contract serves students with disabilities and students experiencing homelessness. Federal laws apply on top of it, specifically to CFR section 20319, which requires full and open competition, as well as 20320. But every item tonight carries in paper vendor performance reports single source forms executed contracts item 6.19 the largest operating dollar figure in this agenda carries nothing not not one attachment not one paper members you're being asked to spend 3.1 i mean sorry 3.3 million dollars on an empty file missouri courts have also upheld this this idea of equal betting in which uh Bidders that are not allowed to come to the table essentially can take the district to court. Metropolitan has the infrastructure, the vehicles, the drivers, and the newest tech. I'm not asking you to select Metropolitan, but we're just asking for the envelope. Publish the specifications, open the bids in the open the way the board has done for 23 years. But approving this tonight on an empty file, this district, this district is not buying. Well, thank you.

Our next speaker will be Mr. Marius Palmer with map transportation.

Good evening. My name is Dr. Marius Palmer. I'm the owner of MAP Transportation, formerly the owner of Harris Taxi Cab Company. I've served as a vendor with St. Louis Public Schools, my family since 1980. My company previously provided transportation services to St. Louis public schools and our contract ended in June of this year. We recently learned the district has authorized a contract with a new transportation provider. I'm here tonight because I have concerns about the process that was used to select that company. To my knowledge, my company was not notified of any opportunity to submit a proposal or bid for these services. I have also been unable to locate an RFP, RFQ, or other public solicitation for the transportation services on the district's recruitment website. Our concern is not simply about losing the contract. My company has been a committed partner to the district. When the district was without transportation provider, we stepped up to help meet that need. We increased our capacity and purchased additional vehicles so we could assist the district in transporting more students when additional services were needed. We also viewed our responsibility as extending beyond simply transporting those students from one location to another. We made efforts to support the children and families we served, including making sure students had meals during holidays and other actions. We are a local company, and we have tried to be responsive to the needs of the students, families, and communities served by the district. That history is part of why it is disappointing that we were not given an opportunity to our knowledge to compete for the new contract. I have attempted to obtain information about how the new provider was selected, but I still do not have a clear understanding of what procurement process was used or whether other qualified transportation companies were given an opportunity to even compete. I am not here to make accusations or suggest that anyone acted improperly. I'm simply asking for the transparency regarding how this contract was awarded. I also believe there is value in working with local companies that have demonstrated a commitment to the district and its students. While an out-of-town company may be able to provide transportation services, I do not believe it would necessarily provide the same level of personal commitment responsiveness and investment in our students and our community that our company has provided we would have welcomed the opportunity to complete for this work and remain interested in continuing to provide the transportation services to this district i respectfully ask the board and district administration to provide information regarding the procurement process used for this contract including whether there was a competitive solicitation and if not what procurement authority was used to secure select the new provider thank you at this time we'll welcome dr joyce m roberts

Good evening, members of the board, Superintendent Berry, community in the room, and community listening at home. I'm here as a representative of Mr. Anthony Bonner, who is writing to you today as a very proud and extremely grateful former attendee of Pierre Laclede Elementary School. I am reaching out to earnestly ask that the board reconsider the proposed closing of this vital institution. Pierre Laclede is far more than just a building. It is a true neighborhood school and a family. This school educated me, all five of my siblings, and practically everyone else in our neighborhood on the west side of St. Louis. For generations, it has been the foundational bedrock of our community, providing a safe nurturing and highly qualified environment for local children to learn and grow. Though times have certainly changed, The significance and importance of Laclede have not wavered. It proudly stands as a blue ribbon school, continuing its long legacy of preparing the hearts and minds of future generations. The educators and staff are still doing the essential work of shaping our youth, proving the excellence can and does thrive within these walls. Perhaps most importantly, Pierre Laclede remains a steadfast pillar of hope in our community. If you thrive through the West Side today, you may notice that there is not much visible hope remaining in the surrounding blocks. Pierre Laclede is that hope. It is a bright, stabilizing presence that shows the children of this neighborhood that they matter, that they are invested in, and they have a bright future ahead of them. Closing the school would mean extinguishing one of the few remaining beacons of light and opportunity for the west side. I respectfully urge the board to look beyond the budget sheets and recognize the irreplaceable community value of this institution. Please reconsider the closure of Pierre Laclede Elementary and allow it to continue being the family, the foundation, and the future for the next generation of St. Louis children. Thank you for your time, your service to our city's youth, and your thoughtful consideration of this urgent matter. Anthony Bonner, St. Louis Public Schools graduate, Pierre Laclede, 1979, Stowe Middle School, 1982, and Vashon High School, 1986. Thank you.

next we have chevette wayne last call chevette wayne hearing nothing we will move on to miss gwen cockshell

I mean, good evening. Or should I say good night? My name is Gwendolyn Cockshell. I'm a UAPO, University African People's Organization outreach person. I'm here to talk about Walbridge Elementary. I saw that it was on the closed list because they had dropped down to 109. And I know that I heard Mr. Marsh and different arguments for closing the schools where budget deficits, aging buildings, declining enrollment, the cost of maintaining multiple buildings. But is that really everything that you all need to be looking at? Walnut Park was one of the most troubled communities in the country. a few years ago. Actually, I didn't want to say it to Ms. Jones, but it was the number one murder capital of the world a couple of years ago. If you close that school, are you even thinking about what that's going to do to an already stressed out community? they already stressed out. We need to examine whether a pattern of disinvestment is contributing to school closures in economically disadvantaged and marginalized communities. It seems like every time there's a school closure, it's always in a marginalized community where poor people are. And it's the reason for that because there's no economic development. They stay in food deserts. We don't have anything over there right now in North Saint Louis. When the family dollar closed, they had nowhere to go to get food in North Saint Louis. So now you want to close the one thing that glues this community together and this wall bridge elementary instead of coming up with some better solutions. And so I close by saying this. Um, if if school closures repeatedly occur in the same type of neighborhoods, particularly in neighborhoods that have experienced decades of disinvestment, that pattern deserves examination rather than simply being dismissed as coincidence because I look at it as discriminatory practices. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we welcome up Ms. Jamara Tankins.

good evening um at first i wasn't going to say anything but when i saw my former principal dr roberts um that is what encouraged me to speak tonight i just want y'all to just want to remind you guys of who we are who we are we were the leading most top competitive school district in the united states of america How did we get her? How did we get her? The school system is the reason I'm an educator today. That I worked in the youth facilities today. That I worked in... St. Louis Community College as a tutor today. We need to hold this together for our children because they need us and we need them. So closing Pierre Laclede would be devastating. It would be very devastating because I was one of those students that helped put us on the map. And I couldn't do it without my teachers. So that's all I have to say tonight.

And now we will welcome Mr. Bill Monroe.

Good evening. The Harriet Tubman, Missouri nonprofit, of which I'm the leader, proposed an urgent and collaborative partnership with the St. Louis Public Schools Board of Education to address the critical needs of unhoused high school age children within the district, recognizing the current restructuring efforts and challenges faced by St. Louis Public Schools. The urgency of now offers a tangible, immediate and sustainable solution, the repurposing of the vacant Beaumont High School into a state-of-art dormitory and educational center. This initiative will provide a safe, stable, and supportive environment for unhoused youth, ensuring their access to education, comprehensive support services, and pathways to a successful future. The project is strategically positioned to leverage existing financial resources, including federal McKinney-Vento funds, the St. Louis RAMS settlement, if they allow it, and community development funding, presenting a fiscally responsible and impactful solution during a time of crisis. The St. Louis School District faces significant challenges, including the ongoing restructuring efforts and the persistent issue of student homelessness. Unhoused high school age students, children often experience profound instability which severely impacts your academic performance, physical and mental health, and overall wellbeing. These students are at a higher risk of dropping out, experience exploitation, and lacking the foundational support necessary for future success. The current crisis within St. Louis public schools amplifies the urgency to provide immediate and effective solutions that ensure every student has a safe place to live, learn, and thrive. Harriet Tubman, Missouri nonprofit, proposes to partner with St. Louis public schools to repurpose the currently vacant and underutilized Beaumont High School into a comprehensive dormitory and educational facility. This facility will serve as a dedicated residential and learning environment for unhoused high school age boys and girls enrolled in St. Louis public schools. I'm going to just stop it at that. But we see every day, every day we're looking in the newspapers, they're locking up kids. They're being killed and murdered in our streets. And we sit back. That's a familiar sound.

Thank you, sister.

I'm older now.

And rounding out our comments today will be commenter Tracy Fantini.

I just like to say real quick, I've been to some county council meetings over the last six months and they've got this great big timer. I mean, it's big, like this big right in front of you so you can see how much time you have left. I would love to see one of those here. Um, good evening. Um, you all know who I am, but thank you all so much for your service and what you're doing here. Number one, I know this isn't easy. And I don't envy a single one of you. This is hard. And I just want to say you all asked excellent questions at the work session. You've asked excellent questions tonight. And I think that that underscores that we need many more answers than we have. And I completely appreciate that longer processes make change hard. but my concern is that rushing into it will be an absolute disaster. We can lose a lot of families and students, and we can do a lot of damage. Unfortunately, one of the things that I have seen consistently over the years, and it honestly breaks my heart to see and hear, is how much families feel disregarded. that they don't they feel that y'all don't care if their kids go to school in this district and just as an example you know our school my kids go to they have tech pickup in the middle of the day and gave us less than a week notice you know for different grades so i got two different kids two different days i have a flexible job but i couldn't change my commitments today So a lot it some of those things demonstrate to to us that. We don't matter. And I know that that's not true. The work that I've done here and the people I've met getting to know people in this district. I know you care. But we don't feel it many times. Too many times we don't feel it. Um, so I'm begging you. I'm truly begging you. Go to North City. listen to the people who will be most impacted by this think about this from families perspectives and what they need to engage i can tell you right now it's food and child care and for the meeting to be in the evening so they can come there after work solicit donations of food uh space you know um whatever it takes honestly or we're gonna lose them And we can't afford that. We can't afford to lose one family, in my opinion. But if they're going to stay, they need to feel like you care. They need a reason. And you need to show them that you care. Thank you so much.

That concludes our public comments. We thank the board's attention for listening to the comments of our community. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Smith.

And we all knew it was dangerous to put a microphone in front of you. Dr. Smith, are you even listening to me now? She's walking away. Go into her comedy act immediately. We know that. Thank you, everyone, for your comments. We now move to our consent agenda items. Our consent agenda items can be voted upon as a whole. Item 6.1 through 6.31. Yes, please.

I move to remove item 6.19, alternate transportation from the consent agenda.

Second. Discussion? Call for a vote.

Dr. Harvey? Yes. Mr. Hikes? Yes. Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Dr. Collins-Adams? Yes. Motion approved.

We'll move now to our consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.31 with the removal of 6.19. Is there a motion on the floor?

I move to approve the remaining consent agenda items.

Second.

Discussion? Call for a vote.

Dr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Heights?

Yes.

Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Dr. Collins-Adams? Yes. Motion approved.

Are there items for discussion? Items for information. ITEMS FOR ACTION, WE BEGIN WITH ITEM 9.1, 95% GROUP PROFESSIONAL LEARNING EMPOWERING EDUCATORS COACHING CONSULTATION FOR CLASSROOM SUCCESS.

I MOVE TO APPROVE ITEM FOR ACTION 9.1.

SECOND. DISCUSSION?

CALL FOR A VOTE. DR. HARVEY?

NO.

MR. HIKES?

YES.

Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster?

Yep, same. Mr. Marston?

Yes.

Dr. Collins-Adams? Yes. Motion approved.

Item 9.2, acceptance of the gift in kind from Shahid Painting and Decorating, acceptance of the donation of $11,480 worth of painting at Vachon.

I move to approve item fraction 9.2 with gratitude. Second.

call for a vote Dr Harvey wait oh I'm sorry discuss for a second yes discussion I didn't see I just wanted to know what kind of painting it was uh it's actually furnished labor materials equipment and patchwork I mean where did they pay I don't know I'm sorry I'm curious Chief Watson where did they paint in for Sean and is Aaron Kane here whoever is first okay thanks Aaron

Hey, good evening, everyone. So this is actually in collaboration with the St. Louis Education Fund. And they would be painting classrooms, just kind of doing an overall refresh before this first day of school so that students have a welcoming, warm, new atmosphere.

Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. I'm glad you asked, Board Member Hubbard. Board Member Heitz, your mic is on. Do you have a concern? No. All right. Call for a vote. Dr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Hikes? Yes. Ms. Hubbard? Yes. Ms. Jones? Yes. Ms. Foster? Yes. Mr. Marston? Yes. Dr. Collins-Adams? Yes. Motion approved.

Section 10, board reports. No, we pulled it for discussion. Board reports? Dr. Berry, your mic is on.

Yes, ma'am. I was looking for Chief Watson. Just a quick question. I know we pulled the transportation. Just want to make sure. Is that going to affect anything on day one for McKinley-Vento students? Are we good?

So yes, that will have an impact on day one of transporting McKinley-Vento students.

Can we have a little more context on what the challenge is at hand?

So what you heard was we went through the co-op. So we go through our procurement process when it comes to any of our competitive bidding. with the guidance from the procurement department, the avenue was to go through our co-op. And we used Omnia Purchasing, and we had the two vendors that we actually went through this process. We did some negotiation. All the contracts haven't been finalized. But in addition to that, we are actually in the process of finalizing the MOU with some of the more local vendors within the St. Louis metropolitan area. We just haven't had that finalized at this point.

So what you're saying is we have two major vendors that are fleets, little small fleets to be able to transport our students with disabilities and in transition.

Correct.

But we will have opportunity to have our smaller services included in that $3.4 million?

So this will all be inclusive. So even with the new MOU that we're finalizing now, it will be a part of that $3 million that we brought to the board for this consent agenda item today.

And I'm going to ask a specific question. Are any of the individuals that presented today a part of that? Were they people that were providing a service in the past? May I jump in? No? Well, sir, if you could just give me a minute. Just Chief Watson, Dr. Berry.

Yes, ma'am. And how we got here, too. So we had approved, I think, about $3 million last year. We spent over $4 million transporting our McKinney-Vento students. And so we had to figure out, how do we consolidate our resources and get to a number that was reasonable and approved. And so, Chief Watson, if you can share how we looked at what's in the co-op and all the vendors that we utilized last year and how the amount was expensive and how using the co-op, it's showing how we saved money. But Chief Watson's also saying getting the MOU together for the smaller one-offs that would include some of the vendors that we have. When you have multiple vendors, we were spending an enormous amount of money.

Correct. to get us to where we are today. So if you all recall, we had 19 vendors that we used when we didn't have a bus. So a part of the 19 vendors, we renewed their contracts for last year. So they were providing services, particularly for McKinney-Vento, student in transition, foster care. So this year, going into this year, we were in a process of either renewing the contract But what was provided to us from procurement was the opportunity to go through the Omnia cooperative purchasing process. So as we went through that process, we were working with Dr. Thomas Murray, working with the transportation department and others. Gloria Howe, who is the director of this Missouri charters, Public School Association, which is a part of this MOU that we'll finalize that is inclusive of some of the vendors that we heard from this evening.

How do we arrive at the dollar amount?

This was from the previous year. So we took the previous years of the dollar amounts that we have from the previous year, I think for the past two years, and we spent over $3 million for transporting students, McKinney-Vento students, foster care students, and students in transition. Good.

OK, so it's my understanding that that $3 million and some odd dollars came from Dr. Mary's budget, and that she was in charge of that. And I'm not understanding why things have really changed and why we are constantly sending contracts outside of the city of St. Louis versus spending money with vendors here to help circulate the dollars. But I'm really hoping that we will make sure that we have vendors that are located here and that Dr. Thomas Mary will have better control of how those funds are spent because I think she understands the need for her homeless students, her foster care students, much better than perhaps another department. And it looks like it's been real stressful. So I'm really hoping that that money will go back into her budget where she can spend it on the vendors that she needs to do it with.

The concern that I have is that students in transition, that's a window that's just open now and then we get a certain number of students and it's closed by October 1 and we move on and we never have any other students that participate in that. That changes all year long. And it also changes in special education with students with disabilities based on what's written on the IEP and whether or not we have to transport the students with special services, one-on-one door-to-door services. I'm just wondering, because we haven't seen. I know we need to save money. I know it's a tremendous expense. I know I've experienced that in the past, and I've heard you guys say this. We're hearing from other vendors now that are saying that the smaller ones that could probably do some of this were not even asked to participate or to submit anything, that it will happen in the future. Tell us a timeline on that. I mean, if we were to vote to approve something for the two major vendors, then what happens? What's the timeline for the smaller ones?

And before you go, I don't know if Mr. Tague is here to explain the process of how, okay, how you can apply to be in the co-op. I don't know, Chief Dobell, if you understand or completely understand what he did. Okay. All right. So we'll make sure that we get that as well so that the vendors can. And I can tell you that it's a different pricing in the co-op. But, Chief Watson, if you wanted to share the timing of the MOU.

So, and I would also encourage any local vendors to contact Gloria Howell. And we'll make sure we provide that information. And she's the representative for this Missouri Charter Public Schools Association, which will be a new co-op for transportation, particularly for St. Louis and Kansas City. And it is for local vendors. Timeline-wise, I know the information has been sent to legal. We're hoping to bring this before the board in our September board meeting for review and approval. So to give you just an idea of where we are, but we're close to completing the MOU with our legal.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Dr. Harvey, go ahead.

Can we circle back to impact on students August 24? And so I appreciate the conversation, but are we now in a triage moment? Because of this decision, and if so, can someone begin to walk us through as a board the plan to triage what we just decided?

So actually, that is exactly the case. We need someone right now to start August 24. As this MOU gets finalized, the goal is to transfer the services that we use to actually utilize the co-op, the local co-op, the local vendors. But we have to get the MOU agreed upon. There are still some negotiations. I think currently we have maybe six vendors that are in this Missouri Charter Public Schools Association, but we're looking for more. And Gloria Howard is the point of contact for this. But to your point, the idea is that we need something to start day one, and then hopefully we can get this MOU finalized, and then we can start utilizing the services for these other transportation vendors.

So at the risk of being very rudimentary, there was an expectation that we were going to move this tonight so that we could have a thing in place the 24th. And then at some point between the 24th and unidentified date, we were going to move to another thing more local that would take up the service. Am I following so far? That is correct. So the thing, though, between tonight... And said date is likely not $3.2 million. That is correct. Right, right. So between what's the cost of the thing between now and the new thing that brings local people in?

So it will still remain that $3.2 million will be used for the duration of this contract for this year. I'm with you.

Ann? for the the one that's ready to pull it off the first day of school for students how much of that do you think would be spent between the 24th and local thing you said what i know i didn't say anything i was going to say jeff watson if we can give how much it was costing us monthly that might help

Um, for the current vendors that we, so their rate was, um, I believe it was $55 up to 25 students per, per trip.

Okay. For that's their monthly cost.

That's their rate. That's the overall rate that's there for, if we call, if the services are needed, we need to utilize the vendor. We can get up to 25 students at $55 a trip. Yeah. I mean,

What we just did just put the district in a moment of having to do some problem solving. What I am not hearing, though, is what is our solution between now and the 24th that you want us to take up now, Dr. May?

So we would just need to decide which vendor that we will be able to utilize, seeing that we don't have an agreement. So approving a vendor, whomever, for us to use until we can come back to the board and then ask to ratify that agreement. I don't know if Dr. Thomas Murray is prepared to come up and speak, but if not, we certainly need to have at least a vendor to use for the next potentially month.

Okay. Okay, what's the question?

Hello, everybody. Hello. question is and board members chime in using the two vendors that we have now if we approve this when will other smaller vendors be included in this process so that we can get all of our children transported on the first day or first week so the missouri charter

was submitted probably back in March. And the attempt was to include the local vendors because the charter only provides McKinney-Vento transportation. The alternate vendors were intended to be used for foster care students. We cannot transport them through the charter.

And you can't transport the special education students.

And so there's an intersectionality between special education and McKinney-Vento, as well as 504 and Safe Schools Act. And so I just want to clarify, because I think we're unclear as to why cost went up. We had a tornado and so we've been responding to local disasters. So it's not a mismanagement. It's not a just putting kids in cabs. We had a natural disaster that has impacted this district and still does. And so prior to Dr. Berry assuming that seat, I was instructed to make sure any kid unhoused, and we had over 5,000 families unhoused as a result of this tornado. And so the prior leadership wanted all our students back into the city. And so that impacted the increase. If you look at past data, historically, we've always been at about $2 million, but when the tornado happened, it changed. And so, um, we have consistently served at least three or 5,000 students. And so my homeless population is larger than most of the surrounding districts. And so for us to think that we can operate as a smaller district, we're not. Our homeless population is the size of other districts.

Thank you.

I have a question about going to a larger vendor outside of the city of St. Louis, outsiders, transporting our students. Our students, I think, become familiar with the different vendors that come to pick them up. And it's important, especially when you're in transition. Our families are going through so much here. in a metropolitan area and I'm really hoping that we will consider having local vendors versus having someone outside because far too many people come in here and snatch the money and run and so I'm just hoping that we will keep the funds here because these people clearly have worked with our students before it's not like it's something brand new so I don't see the problem with them applying and us being able to utilize them soon. Thank you.

Can I say one more thing? Yes. There's no cost to join the collaborative, the cooperative. And so it's not like the national one where the smaller vendors do not have access. To join the cooperative is free. And I guess the difficult part for me is DESE appointed me to give guidance and governance to the Charter Cooperative as the expert. and we haven't signed a contract. The MOU, it's not even a contract, it's free. I would still control the transportation and make the request to the vendors. There's no cost to the district. And so in the interim, I'm just gonna suggest that we sign that MOU. If not, there's no transportation other than bus passes.

Now that makes sense, okay? But that's not how it was presented to us at the very beginning. And so I'm, thank you, if you give me a second, Board Member Foster will speak next, but when I read it, and we reviewed it during the work session, it just, I really assumed that that was the only opportunity that we had. We were, this was, with these two larger vendors, this is the only thing that we had. We did not have a clear explanation. It wasn't until tonight, so I'll thank the vendors that did come tonight to be able to actually state a case so that we can understand it clearer. But we also didn't have a clear explanation from you, so I appreciate what you had to say tonight. I wasn't asked. I know I'm asking you now to accept our appreciation that you've explained all this to us so that we can have it. One thing we're not gonna do is we're never gonna hold back our students for any reason, for transportation, for supplies, none of that. Dr. Harvey made a real clear point. We have to get our students to school on time for the first day of school, for the first week of school, because it's not gonna happen on the first day. We all know that. But it will happen as we provide for them. if you're saying that the three point whatever million dollars is going to actually into um allow you to be able to provide those services even through the larger and smaller vendors then we're good with that remember foster just emphasize the same exact sentiment i just want to make sure i'm clear uh on a couple things one in terms of procurement

when we go through the co-op, that means we don't issue an RFP, is that right?

No, RFP is needed.

Okay, and when you say, you'd like us to sign the MOU, you mean the consent agenda item 6.19 that was on the agenda for tonight?

No, not that MOU. That's the two larger vendors.

Okay.

I was referencing the local vendors with the Missouri charter public cooperative. And so other surrounding districts, their rates, they've decreased their rates to $18. And so the company that I think Chief Watson is referencing is $55 a student. And I provided, I think I've shared and I've forwarded, I don't think Dr. Berry has had time to read it, but the breakdown of the cost of all those cab companies.

So I don't think we have a copy of that MOU as board members tonight. Is that true?

Yeah, but I have one on my desk, if you would like to see it. Oh, and legal hasn't reviewed it, as per Chief Washington.

Can that be ready by Saturday?

We can get it to, I think Vince walked away. But yes, we can work with legal to get that.

And if we approve that MOU on Saturday, does that give us enough time to be ready on August 24th?

Yeah, we are waiting to establish transportation. And they're ready. Yes. And I just want to add about those 19 vendors, that was in response to the district's crisis. I used six vendors last school year.

Attorney Reese, did you hear that?

Yeah.

Okay. All right, never mind, we got it. Harvey, your mic is on? All right, we have that, thank you. That's settled.

Can somebody just state back really clearly what the plan is?

Go ahead, Dr. Barry.

We are going to work with legal counsel on the MOU in addition to seeing how we can supply the vendors with the co-op information for the charter as well. And hopefully by Saturday, we will have a MOU that is agreeable and amenable to ask the board for approval and be able to start on the 24th with vendors.

Thank you board members Harvey Morrison and Foster Jones. This is one time board member Hubbard Hikes and I were quiet. Okay well I wasn't quiet but I was curious. Are there any other items for discussion? Well, that ends.

I have an announcement. I don't know if it's a discussion. Please do, sir. I want to congratulate Central Visual and Performing Arts class of 84 grad Richard Fortas, who's playing Busch Stadium on Sunday with his band, Guns N' Roses.

Any other announcements? Is there a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn this evening's regular business meeting. Second.

Roll call.

Dr. Harvey.

Yes.

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

Yes.

Dr. Collins-Adams. Yes. We are adjourned at 9.20, nope, 9.30 p.m.

Thank you, everyone, for a great meeting. Good night.