[3:31] Let's
[3:37] go ahead
[3:41] and get this
[3:43] meeting started. It's
[3:46] Mr. Otto.
[3:59] Our first order of business today is to
[4:03] do the oath of office for two brand-new board members that
[4:07] we're very pleased to have that joined our group and was
[4:11] appointed by the governor of our great state.
[4:13] And so with that, I would ask that Jordan Bradberry
[4:18] come up, as well as Robby Myers, and take the oath of office.
[4:23] Okay.
[4:28] So I have
[4:30] Jordan. I'll do Jordan first. We'll get Jordan taken care of, yeah?
[4:37] Okay. Well,
[4:39] we appreciate you being here and joining our group, and so the oath of office
[4:43] today.
[4:45] Raise your right hand, please.
[4:48] I-
[4:49] I, Jordan Bradberry
[4:52] ... do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the
[4:56] Constitution of the United States
[4:58] ... do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States
[5:02] ... and the Constitution of the State of Missouri
[5:05] ... and the Constitution of the State of Missouri
[5:07] ... and faithfully perform the duties of a member of the Missouri State Board of
[5:11] Education
[5:11] ... and faithfully perform the duties of a member of the
[5:15] Missouri State Board of Education
[5:16] ... to the best of my ability
[5:18] ... to the best of my ability.
[5:19] Very good. Thank you. Appreciate it, Jordan. Thank you.
[5:31] No, I'll go ahead and get your oath done.
[5:32] Okay.
[5:32] How about that? Do you want it?
[5:34] I'll take it.
[5:35] Okay.
[5:37] Very good. So if you would, raise your right hand.
[5:40] I-
[5:41] I, Robby Myers
[5:43] ... do solemnly swear
[5:44] ... do solemnly swear
[5:46] ... that I will support the Constitution of the United States
[5:48] ... that I will support the Constitution of the United States
[5:50] ... and the Constitution of the State of Missouri
[5:53] ... and the Constitution of the State of Missouri
[5:54] ... and faithfully perform the duties
[5:57] ... and faithfully perform the duties
[5:58] ... of a member of the Missouri State Board of Education
[6:01] ... of a member of the State Board of Education
[6:11] So are photos being taken here?
[6:13] Yes.
[6:14] Yes, and we'd like to get a picture
[6:16] with you and your family as well.
[6:19] Okay. Yeah, they still have yet.
[6:22] Oh, my gosh. They didn't get hit by the alarm or
[6:24] anything?
[6:29] That's nice.
[6:30] Very good.
[6:31] Get your family up here. Yeah, absolutely.
[6:35] Your wife and daughter.
[6:37] Son. Okay, great.
[6:40] Wait.
[6:43] All right.
[6:45] Okay.
[6:45] Precious.
[6:47] She's my favorite daughter.
[6:50] Maybe I'll have-
[6:51] If you'd like.
[6:52] Oh, okay. Sure.
[6:53] I hear those-
[6:53] If you could, that'd be... Yeah.
[6:54] I can
[6:55] do it.
[7:09] Thank you.
[7:10] Yeah.
[7:10] Good job, hon. Thank you.
[7:10] Fantastic.
[7:11] Thank you.
[7:11] Thank you so much.
[7:11] Welcome to the board.
[7:15] See you later.
[7:20] There's my daddy.
[7:35] Okay, so we'll go ahead. Our second item of
[7:38] business is the election of officers.
[7:43] I, at this time, serve as vice president, and so,
[7:48] I need to call on...
[7:50] I do need to introduce Stacy Pries.
[7:55] I apologize. Dr. Pries is our interim superintendent of
[7:59] schools.
[8:00] She wrote some things down here about her experience, how great she
[8:04] was, and everything.
[8:05] I didn't write that.
[8:07] Not really, but we, I think would say, who are on that committee,
[8:11] are very much appreciative
[8:13] of her joining our program, her
[8:17] providing her skill set to our specific program, and truly
[8:21] assisting us in what we do. And it just
[8:25] worked out perfectly that you were available to us, and we're
[8:29] just thankful to have you. So, with that, we need to get
[8:33] election of officers taken care of. Do you have...?
[8:36] I do.
[8:37] Okay. Very good.
[8:39] Thank you, Vice President Miller.
[8:42] We'll now proceed to the election of officers for the Missouri State Board of
[8:45] Education. In accordance with board policy, the first office to be
[8:48] elected is the president of the board.
[8:51] So, at this time, I will open the floor to nominations for president of the
[8:54] Missouri State Board of Education.
[8:56] I move to nominate Brooks Miller for president of the Board of Education.
[9:00] I second.
[9:02] I move to nominate John Otto
[9:08] for president.
[9:12] Thank you. And a second?
[9:15] We need a second for that.
[9:17] Okay.
[9:19] Are there any
[9:20] additional nominations?
[9:23] Okay. Seeing no further nominations, the nominations for president are now
[9:27] closed. We will proceed to the vote.
[9:29] Board members, please cast your vote for president of the Missouri State Board of
[9:33] Education. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.
[9:38] Ms. Casey?
[9:39] Brooks Miller.
[9:41] Mr. Matusik?
[9:42] Yes.
[9:44] Me-
[9:44] Give me names, there are two.
[9:46] Well, hers didn't get a second.
[9:47] Didn't get a second. There's really only one.
[9:50] Oh, okay. Yes.
[9:52] Yes.
[9:54] Mr.
[9:55] Bradberry?
[9:56] Yes.
[10:00] Mr. Myers?
[10:01] Yes.
[10:02] Mr. Otto?
[10:03] Yes.
[10:05] Dr. Scholl?
[10:06] Yes.
[10:07] Ms. Westbrooks-Hodge?
[10:08] The same.
[10:12] Mr. Miller?
[10:13] Sure. Yes.
[10:20] Okay, very good. Now, we move to the vice president of the
[10:23] board.
[10:25] So-
[10:25] And I hand it back to you, Mr. President
[10:27] ... Yeah. Okay, very good. Thank you.
[10:29] Mm-hmm.
[10:29] So, at this time, we'll take nominations for vice president of the Board of
[10:33] Education.
[10:35] I move...
[10:36] This is Carey Casey. I move to nominate John Otto for the
[10:40] position of vice president of the State Board of Education.
[10:43] Second.
[10:44] We have a motion and a second. Are there any other
[10:48] nominations that would like to come forth at this time?
[10:54] Very good. Hearing none, we'll call for a roll call vote.
[10:57] Mr. Bradberry?
[10:59] Yes.
[11:00] Ms. Casey?
[11:01] Yes.
[11:01] Mr. Matusik?
[11:03] Yes.
[11:03] Mr. Miller?
[11:04] Yes.
[11:06] Mr. Myers?
[11:07] Yes.
[11:08] Dr. Scholl?
[11:09] Yes.
[11:11] Mr. Otto?
[11:12] Yes.
[11:14] Ms. Westbrooks-Hodge?
[11:15] Yes.
[11:19] Very good. Welcome, John, as the new vice president of
[11:23] the Missouri State Board of Education.
[11:25] Thank you.
[11:26] Certainly. Okay, so we'll now move on into
[11:30] our agenda. Has everybody had the opportunity
[11:34] to review the agenda? Are there any additions, corrections,
[11:39] and in particular, have you looked at the consent agenda to make sure there's not
[11:42] issues there that
[11:43] we would want to pull or have further discussion on?
[11:49] Cool.
[11:50] I think, in terms of the minutes of the previous meeting-
[11:54] Okay
[11:54] ... Oh. This is for the agenda of today's agenda.
[11:57] Agenda.
[11:57] Move to approve the agenda.
[11:58] Okay. Very good.
[11:59] Second.
[12:04] Okay. Now I call for motions for the minutes of the...
[12:08] Oh.
[12:08] Yeah, we've got to vote on them.
[12:10] Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought it-
[12:13] All in favor, yell-
[12:15] All in favor of the amend--
[12:19] I'm sorry.
[12:21] Where were we at? Agenda.
[12:24] Okay. So all in favor of the agenda as presented. Forgive me.
[12:28] Aye.
[12:29] Aye.
[12:29] Aye.
[12:30] Aye.
[12:32] Okay. Any opposed?
[12:34] Hearing none, that motion passes.
[12:37] Now for the minutes of the May 12th meeting.
[12:39] Has everybody-
[12:40] Move to approve the minutes.
[12:42] Is there a second?
[12:43] Second.
[12:44] Okay.
[12:46] All those in favor?
[12:47] Aye.
[12:48] Aye.
[12:49] Aye.
[12:49] Aye.
[12:50] And that passes.
[12:52] So now, at this time, we have the commissioner's report
[12:56] as slated. So go ahead, if you would, please.
[12:59] Once again, Dr. Preece is here as our interim, and
[13:03] will be providing this report.
[13:06] Thank you.
[13:08] First, I just want to thank the board again for entrusting me with this
[13:10] responsibility and taking some time last week to talk with me individually about
[13:14] your service on the Board of Education.
[13:16] Everyone has been very receptive and welcoming, staff have been
[13:20] fantastic, and their positive energy is contagious.
[13:24] I had the opportunity to attend the new superintendent's meeting on Tuesday and
[13:28] meet a few of our incoming school leaders. That was very exciting.
[13:32] Yesterday, I met with the governor's staff, and I have my first cabinet meeting
[13:35] tomorrow. So we're jumping right in, not wasting any time.
[13:39] In between all of these things, the staff and I have continued to advance the
[13:42] essential work at the top of the priorities of the board.
[13:47] Next, I want to introduce, we have new chief counsel,
[13:51] Megan Fork. Megan?
[13:54] Megan has been with us for about a month.
[13:56] She's back in the-
[13:57] You want to stand up, Megan?
[13:57] Yes. Stand so they can see you.
[13:58] I don't know. I'm short. It doesn't matter.
[14:02] Thank you.
[14:04] And then I did want to mention
[14:08] a former deputy commissioner, the gentleman who served as the deputy
[14:12] commissioner when I was here as the Deputy Commissioner of Learning Services, Dr.
[14:15] Ron Langford. And many people in this room know he passed away
[14:20] recently. Many people in this room and listening online knew former Deputy
[14:23] Commissioner of Finance and Administrative Services, Ron Langford.
[14:28] As I said, Ron passed away earlier this month.
[14:30] At his memorial on Friday, it was clear what an impact he had on education in
[14:34] Missouri, from his time as an educator and longtime superintendent in Webb
[14:38] City, to his role as deputy commissioner at DESE.
[14:41] Ron was honored by DESE as a pioneer in education at
[14:45] the annual conference for school administrators, I believe last
[14:49] year.
[14:50] So just wanted to acknowledge Dr. Langford and his contributions that
[14:54] he made to education across the state.
[14:59] Next, I have one
[15:02] shout-out to our Office of Special Education.
[15:04] They're kind of the quiet heroes, and they don't always get to come to the
[15:08] table with information. But they had their big review with the
[15:12] Office of Special Education at the national level, and
[15:16] their state performance plan was approved as meeting all
[15:20] requirements. They're one of only 20 states that have had
[15:23] that. And
[15:26] Mark said he's pretty sure that Missouri has the longest streak of
[15:30] meets requirements, that that's been going for about 15 years.
[15:32] So we're really proud of the work they do.
[15:34] Like I said, that it doesn't always come to the table, but they are
[15:38] a rock solid team, so we appreciate that.
[15:41] And then lastly, just a little bit of an update on the AF grade
[15:45] card
[15:47] report. We are doing our final edits to our executive
[15:51] order response regarding AF grading, and Assistant Commissioner
[15:54] Lisa Sereno has led that team, that includes stakeholders both inside and
[15:58] external to DESE.
[16:00] When I met with the governor's staff yesterday, they were very complimentary of
[16:04] Lisa and the department for the work that's been done so far.
[16:07] The response is due to the governor's office by June 30th, so we
[16:11] are making finishing touches on that, and won't have any problem hitting that
[16:15] deadline. So the next steps will be a review of the plan with
[16:19] this board in August, and then consideration
[16:23] of the AF grading framework by the board in September.
[16:26] So you'll have August to talk about it, discuss it, think about it, digest it, and
[16:30] then be ready to come back in September to
[16:34] give your approval or not.
[16:37] Dr. Preece?
[16:37] Yes, sir.
[16:38] So can you remind me, and is
[16:42] the A through F framework going to apply
[16:46] to this year's scores or next year?
[16:50] So that's part of the discussion that we're having
[16:54] right now. So we are to the point that we're
[16:58] finished with our work, right? We've worked with our stakeholders.
[17:00] We have the framework and everything.
[17:02] The sticky part gets into the logistics, and it's more technical than I want to
[17:06] delve into. But we're working with the governor's office on
[17:09] operationalizing that AF to get it out as quickly as
[17:13] possible.
[17:15] Just very briefly, we work with a central office of
[17:20] information technology, and they service all of the agencies.
[17:24] And so when they get new projects, they tend to just be in order of when they came
[17:27] in. And so the conversation I had with the governor's office yesterday was, "We
[17:31] understand that this is a priority for you, and we have done what we can do up to
[17:35] this point.
[17:36] We'll be ready to move forward, but
[17:40] this is the timeline that OAIT has given us for when they can produce it."
[17:44] So they were going to work with them and see if they couldn't accelerate that
[17:48] timeline a little bit so that it gets out at a decent time.
[17:50] Thank you.
[17:51] Okay. You're welcome.
[17:54] And that is all I have.
[17:56] Very good.
[17:56] Thank you.
[17:57] Thank you.
[18:00] With that, going into the president's report, we have Pamela Westbrook
[18:04] Hodge for the Strategic Planning Committee.
[18:06] No update. Thank you.
[18:09] Brooks Miller for the legislative committee.
[18:11] And for that, I'm going to just hand it over a little bit here to Dr.
[18:15] Preece, and give us an update
[18:17] Sure. One of the vacancies, as you are aware, is that
[18:22] Perry Goral has moved back to college and career
[18:26] readiness, and leaving the legislative liaison position as soon as I let him go,
[18:30] which I'm not going to do until we have somebody else.
[18:32] We are in the process of looking for good candidates for that
[18:36] position. So I came in and it had been posted,
[18:39] so the chance to look through all of those applications
[18:43] and recruit and see if there are any additional people
[18:47] who need to be part of that mix, and then we will start that right away.
[18:51] There is a sense of urgency to it. Fortunately, we're not in the middle of the
[18:54] legislative session right now,
[18:57] but there are, as you know, a couple of big vacancies and I'm
[19:00] thinking about and working on those, and I'll be sharing with you sort of where I
[19:04] intend to go with that. But we will have a leg--
[19:08] Hopefully, maybe by the next meeting, I can announce to you that we have a new
[19:11] legislative liaison.
[19:12] Great.
[19:13] Thank you.
[19:14] Thank you. Okay. With that, we'll go to the governance committee. John Otto.
[19:18] All right. I don't
[19:20] have much to update, but
[19:23] since the governance committee didn't really meet.
[19:25] But I feel since this falls under governance, that maybe we could
[19:29] discuss, or I'll just throw out some ideas and we can discuss later,
[19:33] the brief agenda for the board
[19:37] retreat next month. Since that's only a few weeks away, I
[19:41] figured we should probably talk about what we
[19:45] wanted to talk about. So, and this is just me as the chair of the
[19:49] governance committee, I'm definitely
[19:51] happy to discuss or take suggestions, but whether now or
[19:54] offline.
[19:56] But I was thinking just a
[19:59] one day, 9:00 to 3:00 type deal,
[20:03] where we just give an orientation overview to the
[20:07] new board members. We discuss
[20:11] the status or our goals with the strategic plan,
[20:15] committee membership, and as you know, we have a strategic plan committee, a
[20:18] legislative committee, governance committee, and a finance committee.
[20:21] And then there will probably be some ad hoc committees around
[20:25] the commissioner search. And
[20:29] then,
[20:30] also to talk about, since we're all pretty much new now and we're going
[20:34] to have a new commissioner, kind of talk about our vision and our strategy and
[20:38] goals for this board. So again, that's just suggestions off
[20:42] the top of my head. But I'm happy to discuss,
[20:46] because June, I think it's July
[20:49] 14th. That's pretty quick. That's going to be here pretty fast.
[20:53] Oh, go ahead.
[20:54] Go ahead, Mike.
[20:56] Mike Matusik.
[20:57] Yeah, I just want to echo what John said.
[20:59] I think
[21:01] trying to make the most of
[21:03] the next
[21:06] work session that we have, or retreat in July would be great.
[21:09] And I think my only
[21:13] comment really is that
[21:16] I would love for those meetings to be more of a discussion, right?
[21:20] Sort of a board discussion as opposed to sort of
[21:24] listening to presentations and asking a few questions.
[21:27] I think the board needs to have more time to discuss
[21:31] stuff and so that's the only comment I would make, but I think John outlined it
[21:35] well. Thank you.
[21:36] Ms. Casey?
[21:37] Yeah.
[21:38] I agree with all those comments, and I have a recommendation that now
[21:42] that we have a board president and board vice president,
[21:46] that
[21:48] you collectively meet and propose an agenda that you can share out to
[21:52] the board, and we can offer feedback to you and
[21:55] finalize the agenda within the next week.
[21:58] Yeah, go ahead.
[21:59] Yeah, I would also suggest if you have other items...
[22:02] So for me, one of the big things was, and I talked about, was
[22:07] where we end and where the local districts
[22:11] start.
[22:11] Mm-hmm.
[22:12] And I think that that's something that comes up routinely at some of our
[22:16] meetings, and I think if we had an understanding of exactly where our
[22:20] lines are and responsibilities and things, that would be very helpful.
[22:25] Okay.
[22:26] So is the date scheduled for that, is that on July 14th?
[22:30] I believe so, right.
[22:31] Has the location been announced?
[22:33] It'll be right here.
[22:34] It'll be right here. Perfect.
[22:35] Yeah, nothing fancy.
[22:36] Very good.
[22:37] Yeah.
[22:40] And...
[22:41] Yeah. And so I think if any of us have an
[22:45] immediate recommendation, just send a note over-
[22:48] Mm-hmm
[22:49] ... or a phone call and then you can pull all that together-
[22:52] Yeah
[22:52] ... and then we can all collectively review and finalize the agenda.
[22:56] Yeah, no, that sounds like a good plan, a good idea, and Brooks and I can touch
[23:00] base over the next week or so, and then get something out via email.
[23:03] And then depending on,
[23:07] this is just coming to me, depending on what
[23:12] we settle on for the agenda, I didn't know if we wanted to
[23:16] have a third-party facilitator to Mike's point.
[23:20] We can kind of get bogged down in discussion, and I would want to keep the meeting
[23:25] moving forward. So I don't know who that would be, but just throwing that out
[23:28] there. But we could talk about it
[23:30] offline.
[23:31] Yeah.
[23:33] What do you anticipate as far as time of meeting? How long?
[23:37] Like I said,
[23:38] just a midday, 9:00 to 3:00. That way, there's no overnight or
[23:42] anything.
[23:43] Okay.
[23:43] You kind of get to... And maybe do a working lunch or something like that, but.
[23:47] Except for Robbie, it'd probably be an overnight.
[23:49] Well, that's...
[23:50] I'm not getting up at 4:00.
[23:54] All right.
[23:54] Yeah.
[23:55] Any other questions about that, the board retreat?
[23:58] I'm certain there will be through the month, and please just don't hesitate to
[24:01] reach out to John or myself, and we'll get back with you
[24:05] on that.
[24:07] Okay.
[24:09] Mrs. Casey on the Finance Committee, please.
[24:11] Yes. Thank you, President Miller.
[24:14] So, the Finance Committee did meet during the month, and
[24:18] reviewed reports that you will see today, and let me summarize
[24:21] that. You will be seeing an executive summary of
[24:24] FY26. That is the current budget year, so
[24:28] we're really near the end of it, and you're going to see an
[24:32] update to the presentation that has been provided in our previous
[24:35] meeting. Our newest team member in the finance department,
[24:39] Rebecca, working very closely with Dr.
[24:42] Cruz, continues to make
[24:45] improvements, if you will, based on our feedback to the manner in which
[24:49] that data is presented. So, I hope you'll find today's presentation
[24:53] very helpful. And it'll also be helpful to our newest board
[24:56] members.
[24:58] Following that update on FY26, you will see a
[25:02] summary, not in the same format, but more of a written summary,
[25:06] on FY27. That
[25:09] summary, in future meetings, will evolve.
[25:12] But we'll get an update on where we stand with the changes that were made in the
[25:15] final budget from the appropriations standpoint, and where the governor
[25:19] stands on signature.
[25:22] The third thing that you're going to see today is going to be just an
[25:26] update on the preparation work to begin
[25:30] on FY28.
[25:33] So, on that point, I want to share that the
[25:36] committee, which consists of John Otto and myself, have had
[25:40] discussion about how we will move the
[25:44] FY28 budget forward with
[25:47] Dr. Cruz. And the committee will be meeting and reviewing all of
[25:51] the preparation details,
[25:53] the timeline, et cetera, for the FY28 budget.
[25:56] Of course, our interim commissioner will be involved appropriately as well.
[26:01] We will work, though, with Dr. Cruz to review, at a much more
[26:05] detailed level, all the line items and the programs that are funded,
[26:09] the justifications, the results, et cetera, and where the final
[26:13] recommendations will be
[26:15] at from the department's standpoint on what should be in the
[26:19] FY28 budget. We will then be bringing key
[26:23] insights and key questions for discussion at future board meetings to
[26:27] inform you of
[26:30] the inputs to the FY28 budget,
[26:34] how it will work. It just won't be a review of all the line items.
[26:37] We'll bring all of the material items and areas of
[26:41] concern, recommendations for change, et cetera, for a broader, full
[26:45] discussion, all in line with the timeline that will be spelled out by
[26:49] Dr. Cruz,
[26:51] so that we will all be prepared to make an approval
[26:55] in the appropriate meeting in the fall.
[26:58] Okay.
[27:00] Questions on that?
[27:03] Hearing none, thank you.
[27:08] Next on our agenda is the Missouri School
[27:12] Funding Modernization Task Force.
[27:15] Casey and Westbrook Hodge.
[27:19] I'm happy to provide the update, Mr. President.
[27:22] Fine. Thank you.
[27:23] The task force is now in the recommendation
[27:27] development phase of its work. At the June 1st meeting,
[27:31] members focused on the county property assessment ratios
[27:35] and two modeling options for the school funding formula.
[27:39] So, I'll talk about the county property assessment ratios
[27:43] first. So, great discussion
[27:46] with the State Tax Commission staff.
[27:48] We talked about the challenge of obtaining accurate market value
[27:52] data for real estate.
[27:55] That information is important because property values
[27:59] affect local tax capacity, property tax collections,
[28:03] and education revenue streams. The task force discussed
[28:07] whether the formula should continue using available assessed
[28:10] values, adjust local effort based on assessment
[28:14] ratios, reduce the role of assessed value, or
[28:18] recommend policy improvements outside the formula.
[28:22] With respect to modeling options for the school funding formula,
[28:27] we continued reviewing two modeling approaches.
[28:30] One that modernizes the current formula structure, and
[28:34] another that uses a combined wealth index incorporating
[28:38] both property and income measures.
[28:41] And then finally,
[28:43] we were asked to complete a prioritization
[28:47] exercise, and members,
[28:51] under a hypothetical $400 million limit,
[28:55] were asked to prioritize some of the elements of both of
[28:58] those
[28:59] modeling options. Again, this is not a final recommendation,
[29:03] but it will inform continued modeling.
[29:07] The task force remains on schedule with
[29:11] stakeholder feedback planned for the fall, and final
[29:14] recommendations due to
[29:16] Governor Kehoe by December 1st. That
[29:20] concludes my update, Mr. President.
[29:23] Are there any questions with regards to that?
[29:26] And that task force started meeting one year ago?
[29:30] Just about.
[29:31] Yeah.
[29:31] Yeah, summer 2025.
[29:33] Yeah. So, there's been a lot of work around this, and it's quite
[29:37] complicated.
[29:38] It's quite complicated. The biggest hurdle is
[29:42] accurate
[29:44] property values and-
[29:46] Mm-hmm
[29:47] ... because that's our primary revenue stream.
[29:50] And so, I'm not quite sure how much control we
[29:54] have over influencing the accuracy of
[29:58] those numbers.
[30:00] Mm-hmm.
[30:01] So, therein lies our big challenge we're trying to figure out how to work around.
[30:05] Sure. Brooke? Okay, thank you. Mr. Matusik?
[30:09] Pamela, just a quick process question.
[30:11] So, when the task force
[30:14] The task force will come up with multiple recommendations, several options
[30:18] for the governor. Is that correct?
[30:20] Yeah.
[30:22] Three is the mandate. Right now we're modeling two, which is, one, an
[30:26] update to the current formula, and then the new one that I just described.
[30:30] And so will the task force essentially vote on each of the
[30:33] recommendations that are being sent to the governor, or how does
[30:38] the task force decide?
[30:40] So, good question. We haven't gotten to the particulars of
[30:44] how we will make the decision. My recommendation
[30:48] would be to use a scoring rubric where we evaluate
[30:52] each option, so we objectively determine, based
[30:55] on important attributes, which one best meets
[30:59] those attributes. That would be my recommendation to be objective and fair.
[31:05] Thank you.
[31:05] You're welcome.
[31:07] President Miller?
[31:08] Yes.
[31:09] Thank you. I would like to also give an update on NASBE, the National
[31:13] State Boards of Education
[31:17] Association.
[31:18] So, for our newest board members,
[31:22] there is an organization called NASBE, the National Association of State
[31:25] Boards of Education, and we, as the
[31:29] state of Missouri, are members of this association,
[31:32] as are many or most of all the other states, as well
[31:38] as Guam, as a...
[31:42] Now I forgot the word, but an associated
[31:46] territory. Thank you. Of the United States.
[31:49] So, it is a very informative group.
[31:52] The association continuously brings together board
[31:56] members from all the states to discuss key topics.
[32:00] So we learn a lot from each other. They have monthly calls.
[32:03] They have working groups that might focus on a particular
[32:07] topic or undertake a particular project.
[32:11] They hold conferences. There's actually a new member conference that will
[32:15] be taking place in just a couple of weeks, and it might be too soon for either
[32:19] of you to travel to it, but it is very informative.
[32:22] There is a national conference that takes place at the end of
[32:25] October, and I invite all board members to travel to
[32:29] that, not that you're able to, but to be aware of it.
[32:32] I will be going, and as a new board member, if you're free to go, and I'll be
[32:36] sure that you receive the information,
[32:39] you would find it very informative.
[32:41] One, the ability to meet other board members from across the states,
[32:45] understand their structures, their challenges,
[32:48] and just making those relationships, but
[32:52] then also learn about key initiatives that are happening in education
[32:56] around the country.
[32:58] So, I will also make sure that you've been added to the mailing
[33:02] list so that you're aware of whenever phone calls, or they have a monthly
[33:06] exchange, as I mentioned, where all the states come together and give updates,
[33:10] and it's very informative. And from the June exchange, I would
[33:14] like to share just two key updates that
[33:18] the state of Illinois has just released their comprehensive
[33:21] numeracy plan. I know that has been an important focus of
[33:25] our department here. And
[33:28] so that is now available. It is modeled after their literacy
[33:32] plan that was released in 2024. Of course, we've
[33:36] had a literacy plan in place for a few years longer than that.
[33:39] But I have not yet reviewed the numeracy plan,
[33:43] but I've
[33:46] in fact forwarded it over to Lisa Sereno, so she is aware of it,
[33:50] and I encourage the department to be taking a look at that.
[33:54] Secondly, Indiana is adjusting their
[33:57] accountability model. Now, all states have different accountability models,
[34:01] so don't be confused with this update.
[34:04] How they view an accountability model is
[34:08] based on that A through F grade card approach.
[34:11] That is not where our accountability model is today.
[34:15] Our accountability model is based on
[34:18] the APR, the annual performance
[34:22] rating that is
[34:24] for all districts.
[34:26] However, in Indiana, they're making adjustments to their A through F model
[34:31] to begin to incorporate just a few things beyond, I
[34:35] think in one way, where we have our A through F,
[34:39] and we'll learn more about that in August.
[34:40] But one key point that they're doing is they're going to
[34:43] be scoring it at the individual
[34:46] student level,
[34:48] and the accumulation of the student scores
[34:52] will become the school score. Where
[34:56] in
[34:57] the initial model, and possibly in our model, it is starting out, and we'll
[35:01] again learn more about it, so I could be speaking incorrectly, where it is based on
[35:05] an average of the school score,
[35:08] not built at the individual student level.
[35:11] So, as Tracy said earlier, there's a lot of technical
[35:15] things to understand here. So, I encourage you,
[35:19] Stacy, to become familiar with the Indiana model.
[35:21] Not that it will change ours at this moment in time, because
[35:25] we're ready to submit our plan, but to be aware of what's happening in all the
[35:29] other states, so as we learn and evolve
[35:32] with the implementation of the A through F, it might guide us in the future.
[35:37] The next meeting will be on August 3rd.
[35:40] I will make sure, again, that you're made aware of it if you would like to join
[35:43] that in a Zoom meeting.
[35:46] And that's the update.
[35:47] Great. Thank you for that, Mrs. Casey. Appreciate it. Hey, one question.
[35:52] Do we have
[35:53] the conference this summer with school administrators that we had last
[35:57] summer?
[35:58] Yes. I would probably let
[36:02] someone else speak more to where the planning is for that-
[36:05] Yeah. I think-
[36:05] ... but it is carrying on.
[36:06] Okay. I was able to attend it last year, and I would
[36:10] encourage members of the board, if they had time, to sit in on
[36:13] some of the classes, or could attend and sit in on some of the classes, because I
[36:17] thought it was relevant.
[36:20] Yeah, I was just going to ask about that.
[36:21] I'm looking at online, it's July 26th through the 28th at
[36:25] Tan-Tar-A. Is that right? Yeah
[36:27] That is correct. It's July... Yeah, Kyle Kruse, deputy commissioner of Financial
[36:30] Administrative Services. It's July 26th, 27th, and 28th at
[36:34] Margaritaville Tan-Tar-A. The Sunday night session is largely a
[36:38] commissioner's welcome.
[36:40] Monday is the day when we have the general session.
[36:43] We have a keynote speaker, Ed Hightower, who actually is a former NCAA
[36:47] official and a school person. And then we have breakout sessions
[36:51] throughout the morning on a variety of topics.
[36:54] We have the Pioneers Luncheon to recognize our heroes in
[36:58] education, and then more breakout sessions in the afternoon, followed
[37:02] by a new superintendent's recognition in the evening
[37:06] on Monday. And the breakout sessions right now are set up, I think
[37:09] there's five different slots and
[37:14] four different sessions going on in each
[37:18] slot. So, it's a good variety of...
[37:21] I think we have 19 topics total, and a couple are being repeated.
[37:25] So, they'd be great, and I know everyone will be glad to see the state board there
[37:28] representing and supporting public education.
[37:32] The end
[37:33] morning is Tuesday, and there will be a
[37:38] guest speaker. Our superintendent of the year, I believe, is scheduled to be there.
[37:41] I'm double-checking that. I'll give a school finance update,
[37:45] and the commissioner will close us out.
[37:47] But we'd be glad to have you in attendance for any or all.
[37:51] And Dr. Kruse, we're close to finalizing that agenda, correct?
[37:55] And having all-
[37:55] We are very close
[37:56] ... those in place-
[37:56] Yes
[37:56] ... so we could send out the final agenda.
[37:58] Yes. What we're doing right now is finishing the titles and descriptions of each
[38:01] session, all the breakout sessions.
[38:03] We hope to have that done in the next week and a half, and we can provide that to
[38:06] you.
[38:07] Perfect.
[38:08] Thank you. Appreciate that. Last year, do you know what your attendance was
[38:12] last year from...
[38:14] Sorry to make you say, but it was well attended, I imagine.
[38:16] It is well attended, right.
[38:19] If I had to ballpark it, we're in the 500 and some person range.
[38:22] Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[38:24] So if you have time and could get up there, I think it would be an important
[38:28] or valuable resource of learning.
[38:32] So at this time, we have the consent agenda.
[38:36] Are there any items on the consent agenda requiring discussion?
[38:40] Move to approve consent.
[38:41] Second.
[38:42] Okay.
[38:43] Thank you, Mr. Matousek and Mrs. Casey.
[38:46] All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say, "Aye."
[38:49] Aye.
[38:49] Aye.
[38:50] Any opposed? Hearing none,
[38:53] we'll turn it over now to
[38:56] Dr. Paul Katnik. I think he's got several items that he's going to present today,
[39:00] and I welcome him to the board, to the discussion.
[39:15] Mr. President, members of the board, good morning.
[39:18] As you pointed out, I have several items for you coming up next.
[39:22] First time, I am Paul Katnik. I am the head of the Office of Educator
[39:26] Quality here at DESE. Our next seven items are about rules.
[39:31] But before we get into each of those, I wanted to provide a brief
[39:34] overview about both the purpose and the process for
[39:38] rulemaking. Missouri statute often explicitly states
[39:42] that the State Board of Education shall promulgate rules in
[39:45] particular areas or to address particular needs.
[39:49] In these upcoming agenda items, we'll be talking about standards for the mentoring
[39:53] of new teachers, because Missouri law says those standards should
[39:57] be established by the State Board of Education, and we do that by
[40:01] creating these rules. Your other agenda items are about certification
[40:05] requirements for educators, which Missouri statute says are set
[40:09] by the State Board of Education, and we, again, we establish
[40:13] those requirements and rules. All rules like this require approval
[40:17] from you as board members to ensure that we are compliant with Missouri law.
[40:21] This handout, which I believe all of you have received,
[40:25] is the process for getting rules revised and approved.
[40:28] Usually, preparing for this process that we go through with all of you
[40:31] takes a year or more. For our certification rules today, it actually has
[40:35] taken two years, and the reason for that is because it includes efforts
[40:39] of work groups of educators, of higher education, professional
[40:42] organizations, and stakeholders who determine what changes or
[40:46] additions should be made to a set of standards or requirements.
[40:50] This preparation phase also includes the involvement of two
[40:54] statutorily required advisory groups.
[40:57] One is the Missouri Advisory Council for Certification of Educators,
[41:01] we call that MACCE for short, and the other is the Missouri Advisory
[41:05] Board for Educator Preparation, called MABEP.
[41:08] These two advisory groups were created by statute to ensure that there is
[41:12] sufficient stakeholder input and involvement before we bring any
[41:16] recommended changes to you. In the upcoming items, you will hear us
[41:20] report on the extent of support from MACCE and from MABEP on our
[41:24] items. Once we have all that ready, this process begins, and
[41:28] it can take anywhere from eight to 12 months to fully complete.
[41:31] So, I'm just going to walk you through some of these steps that are contained here
[41:35] in the graphic. The governor's office first gets time to review the
[41:39] proposed changes. They can take up to a month.
[41:42] And while that review is happening, we are also routing the rule and any of
[41:46] its supporting documents through our department leadership, and
[41:49] also through the legal counsel, and we are submitting rules and supporting
[41:53] documents to the DESE rules team. We also often
[41:57] provide an information presentation to the State Board of Education to
[42:01] introduce the issue and forecast the upcoming changes.
[42:05] However, at that presentation, there is no vote from you at that time.
[42:08] We're just building your awareness around it.
[42:11] We did a March presentation for all of you board members and a May
[42:14] presentation on our upcoming items.
[42:17] At the next meeting, which is today's meeting, the State Board of Education will
[42:20] get an overview of the rule, including why the change is being made,
[42:25] who assisted in the work group The support of MACIE and MABEP and
[42:28] implications for the revised version.
[42:31] Then we'll be asking you as a board today to authorize publication in the Missouri
[42:35] Register, which allows us to post it for a required 30-day public
[42:39] comment period.
[42:41] Step three, then it's filed by Secretary of State and the Joint Committee on
[42:45] Administrative Rules. That usually takes about a month.
[42:48] It is then published, step four, in the Missouri Register, which
[42:53] contains all of the published rules, and it allows for a
[42:56] statutorily required public comment of 30 days.
[43:00] Our goal with rules that we bring to you is to get no public
[43:04] comment, and that's because we're hoping we've done our homework well enough ahead
[43:08] of time, that we've discussed it, everyone knows about it, and if there were any
[43:12] issues, we've addressed those even before we bring it to you.
[43:16] Step five, after public comment, we have three months to get it back to the State
[43:20] Board of Education, or we have to start this entire process
[43:24] all over again. This is to ensure that the rule is being changed, has
[43:27] current approval, and current support.
[43:31] Then at step six, there's a second presentation to the State Board of
[43:34] Education, and at that presentation, you'll hear a summary of
[43:39] all of the comments that we've received, and a
[43:42] response on whether a change will be made, and if so, why or why not.
[43:47] For these upcoming rules today, we will anticipate a second
[43:50] presentation being made to you in September.
[43:53] Final approval of the rule then gets requested from you at that meeting.
[43:58] If you approve, it's then filed with the Joint Committee on
[44:01] Administrative Rules in its finalized form for their
[44:05] review, which is mostly a technical review of edits
[44:09] to be sure it's internally consistent and also consistent with other
[44:12] rules. It is then filed with the Secretary of State's office,
[44:16] which manages the government rule process.
[44:19] If approved there, down to step nine, they are now posted in the Missouri Register
[44:23] with all other rules, and then the full text of the rule, step
[44:27] 10, is published in the Code of State Regulations, which is home
[44:31] to all the rules. And then step 11 is the effective date.
[44:35] In some instances, rules that we bring before you, one of them today, it'll be
[44:39] effective immediately. But in other ones, when we have to allow time for
[44:42] structures to kind of change and adapt, it may be a year or two
[44:46] down the road before it actually becomes effective.
[44:49] So now that we reviewed why and how the rule-making happens,
[44:54] we'll begin with agenda item F, which is on our
[44:58] mentoring standards.
[45:01] I am joined by Dr. Bobbi Jo Lewis. She's in my office.
[45:04] She's the coordinator of educator development in our office
[45:08] here. Among other responsibilities, she coordinates
[45:12] the Missouri Teacher Development System, what we call the
[45:15] MTDS. This program provides intensive support to
[45:19] thousands of teachers across the state. Many of them are new teachers.
[45:23] Missouri Statute
[45:25] 161.375, it states that the department shall develop
[45:29] standards for high-quality mentoring programs for beginning teachers.
[45:33] The standards shall be applicable to all public schools and shall be developed to
[45:37] ensure that required district mentor programs all meet
[45:41] common objectives. Subsection three of that law states that
[45:45] the board shall require holders of the four-year initial professional
[45:49] certificate to participate in a mentor program approved
[45:53] and provided by the district for two years.
[45:56] And this is applicable to every area of certification.
[45:59] Doesn't matter what kind of a teacher that you are.
[46:02] Research tells us, there's a lot of studies on this, that high-quality mentoring
[46:06] is essential for retaining new teachers.
[46:08] Numerous studies show us that teachers who receive high-quality support in
[46:12] the early years of their career remain in our profession longer.
[46:17] Improving teacher retention has been an essential focus of
[46:21] our department for the past six years, and it's also a priority area for
[46:25] the department's strategic plan. Thank you.
[46:29] We shared this slide with you last month in May when we did our information
[46:32] meeting, and we're just sharing it here again today as a reminder.
[46:35] Missouri has had over 7,700 beginning teachers
[46:39] enter the classroom. These new teachers influence the learning of well
[46:43] over 150,000 students. The retention rate of
[46:47] beginning teachers, which is the
[46:50] green line down there at the bottom, is the lowest category of retention when
[46:54] compared to other groups of teachers.
[46:56] The data shown here confirms why emphasizing high-quality
[47:00] mentoring is so important. Retention rates of first-year teachers, while
[47:04] improving in the last year or so, shows a steady decline over the
[47:08] past six years. This occurs for a variety of reasons.
[47:11] In exit surveys, the number one reason first-year teachers leave the
[47:15] profession, they tell us, is due to lack of support.
[47:19] Support for new teachers can come in a variety of ways.
[47:22] High-quality mentoring as a part of teacher induction helps support
[47:26] those new teachers.
[47:28] I'll now ask Dr. Lewis to describe the process and the changes we
[47:31] propose to be made to the state's mentor standards.
[47:36] Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here today.
[47:39] Stakeholder input is key to ensuring that any changes to rules that we
[47:43] propose will be good for the overall profession.
[47:46] A work group consisting of a variety of stakeholders met regularly for almost two
[47:50] years to create the proposed revisions to the mentor standards.
[47:53] The teacher organizations met with their members and brought back valuable feedback
[47:57] that was considered when these revisions were drafted.
[48:00] The revisions were approved unanimously by this work group, and there's a list of
[48:04] the work group members here on this slide.
[48:07] They were presented to the Missouri Advisory Council for Certification of
[48:10] Educators, MACIE.
[48:12] The advisory council is required by statute to review proposed changes to
[48:16] certification before they are presented to you.
[48:19] We presented these changes in their April meeting, and they voted unanimously in
[48:23] favor of the proposed revisions.
[48:27] This slide contains a link and a QR code that will take you to the current mentor
[48:31] guidelines. You can also access the new proposed mentor guidelines here
[48:35] as well.
[48:37] This next slide is a
[48:41] overview, highlights of the current mentor guidelines and the
[48:44] proposed changes.
[48:47] The current mentoring program standards were adopted by the Missouri State Board of
[48:50] Education in February of 2017. Since that time, there have
[48:54] been significant challenges in the recruitment and retention of beginning teachers.
[48:58] The current format is confusing and it's difficult to read.
[49:02] There are no clear definitions, and the phrases are outdated
[49:05] and no longer relevant in some cases.
[49:08] The current standards do not provide clear expectations of contact hours and do
[49:11] not clearly explain what it means for support to be ongoing.
[49:15] So as you take a look at this
[49:18] table, it shows the areas of the differences, it shows what the
[49:22] current guidelines show, and then the new proposed guidelines.
[49:25] So in the new guidelines, we're looking at clearly defining the Beginning Teacher
[49:29] Assistance Program, that's BTAP. You know there's lots of acronyms in education.
[49:34] What contact hours looks like. It clearly defines what ongoing looks
[49:37] like, and talks more about that mentor/mentee and the mentoring
[49:41] toolbox, and what role is taken place by the Professional Development Committee.
[49:46] We also take a look at defining more exactly what a mentor should be.
[49:50] Instead of focusing on a specific number of years, we look more at what they
[49:54] bring to the table, the experiences that they have.
[49:57] Those experienced teachers should be willing to attend ongoing professional
[50:01] development and mentor training so they can become the best mentor possible.
[50:05] And then school districts and charter schools will be able to ensure that regular
[50:09] meetings occur between those mentor and mentee.
[50:13] We also highlight in the new guidelines how confidential this
[50:16] is. This is not meant to be evaluative of those teachers.
[50:21] It is very important that this relationship is a back-and-forth
[50:25] communication and a sharing of experiences and knowledge, and it is not meant to
[50:29] be evaluative. And so we talk pretty clearly in those
[50:32] standards that it is not evaluative and that it is confidential except for
[50:36] in specific cases of individual safety and child endangerment.
[50:41] We also clarify the stakeholders that are involved in the program,
[50:45] what it should look like, who should be involved.
[50:48] It does retain the four release periods and the four observations, but it very
[50:51] clearly recommends the number of contact hours and how that should be broken down
[50:56] throughout the year.
[51:00] This slide contains a link and a QR code to the existing
[51:04] Appendix A. This is a companion document to the mentoring
[51:07] standards, and it also, as you can see, has the link and the QR
[51:11] code if you would like to look at the full
[51:13] document.
[51:16] This slide highlights the differences between the existing information in Appendix
[51:20] A and the new information that we're proposing for the new Appendix A.
[51:23] Appendix A of the state's mentoring standards was also officially adopted by the
[51:27] State Board in 2017. While Appendix A was meant to serve as
[51:31] a tool and provide clarity, districts found the topics to be overly
[51:35] broad and confusing and difficult to implement.
[51:37] Appendix A currently includes a matrix of roles of multiple stakeholders that are
[51:41] no longer relevant. Overall, the document is not user-friendly, and it does
[51:45] not have a formal way to track any of the fields.
[51:49] So this is also a table that shows an overview of
[51:52] the old Appendix A and the new proposed Appendix A.
[51:56] We really looked at simplifying it, making it user-friendly.
[51:59] That was the number one complaint that I received from districts.
[52:02] And so we looked at really making this form to be something that they can
[52:06] use.
[52:07] We narrowed down the scope. We got rid of external
[52:11] stakeholders, really focused on that relationship between the district, the
[52:15] administrator, the mentor, and the mentee teachers.
[52:18] We included logs, signatures, dated records for usage.
[52:23] Really looked at trying to make the different sections clearly
[52:27] identifiable so they could have a clear understanding of what is expected from each
[52:31] role. And we also turned it into an action-oriented checklist
[52:34] instead of
[52:36] a chart that was difficult for them to read.
[52:43] I often receive questions from districts searching for tools and other
[52:46] items that would help them with their existing mentoring programs.
[52:50] A lot of districts lack the resources or capacity to create
[52:54] items that can be easily accessed and used.
[52:56] Based on this feedback, I'm very excited to share with you the mentoring toolbox.
[53:01] This is a compilation of tools that districts can use to help strengthen their
[53:04] mentoring programs. The toolbox will be available,
[53:08] I hope by August 15th when school starts.
[53:11] But
[53:12] all districts in Missouri can use it.
[53:14] There is a link embedded here that will take you to the tools, or you can use the
[53:17] QR code. But basically, these are things that they can use, and they
[53:21] can easily adapt to their own district.
[53:23] It really helps them with some clearly
[53:27] defined agreements between the mentors and the mentees, what those
[53:31] roles look like, and really just helps lay out an entire mentoring
[53:35] program for the district if they choose to use it.
[53:37] Again, it is by choice, but it is available for those districts that would like to
[53:40] use it.
[53:45] So, item F on your agenda. We now, with that
[53:49] information in front of you, recommend that you authorize publication of
[53:53] these new standards,
[53:55] and that will allow us to put it out for public comment.
[53:58] So moved.
[54:00] Is there a second?
[54:01] Second.
[54:02] We have a second. This is Westbrook Hodge. Now, can you take some questions?
[54:07] Yes, please.
[54:09] I have maybe a couple questions. Does every school district
[54:13] in the state of Missouri have a mentoring program?
[54:16] Every school district has to mentor their new teachers. That's a requirement.
[54:20] That is a requirement.
[54:21] Right. And so this toolbox is to give them the tools to help them do it
[54:25] well.
[54:25] Is there a fiscal note with it or anything?
[54:29] No.
[54:30] They're just required to do it.
[54:31] Correct.
[54:34] It's interesting to me that
[54:37] If you were superintendent and were dealing with teachers leaving and
[54:41] things of that nature,
[54:43] that
[54:45] we're kind of micro telling them what they need to be doing to keep
[54:49] teachers.
[54:51] It's just strange to me
[54:54] how we
[54:55] take on this responsibility of mentoring,
[55:00] when really it should be taken on by leadership. That's my opinion.
[55:03] Yeah.
[55:04] And I appreciate-
[55:04] The actual requirement is that new teachers be mentored for a
[55:08] period of two years, and that it be provided by the district.
[55:11] What this represents is a resource that you can use.
[55:15] We don't make them use the toolbox, but we have it available to them if they'd like
[55:19] to. And based on the feedback we get, a lot of districts would like the
[55:23] extra resources to help them do a better job at it because they know
[55:26] retention, especially of early career teachers, is tied so
[55:30] closely to how they support them in the early years of their career.
[55:35] Okay.
[55:36] Any other questions?
[55:38] Mrs. Casey.
[55:38] Thank you.
[55:40] Dr. Kantnik and Bobby, thank you so much for the update.
[55:43] Do you
[55:45] ever go out and assess the mentoring programs that are
[55:49] in place, and look for best practices across the different districts, and
[55:53] have a method for districts to come together to share best
[55:57] practices?
[56:00] So I do actually travel the state as my role, when
[56:04] I look at programs for Missouri Teacher Development System.
[56:07] So I do have a chance to talk to administrators and teachers.
[56:10] And so while it's not an evaluative process of their programs, I
[56:14] do talk to people in all the regions, and I bring that information back.
[56:18] And then we also had other individuals from stakeholders around the state involved
[56:21] in the work group that worked on this mentoring program, mentoring standards.
[56:25] But I do not do an assessment of that, no.
[56:28] And do we have,
[56:31] specifically an ability to tie data back
[56:35] to the mentors and their... And maybe that is a point you covered
[56:39] earlier in the data on the success of the mentoring
[56:43] programs and their likelihood of staying longer and
[56:46] their effectiveness in the classroom, tying it back to
[56:50] that cohort of then academic outcomes.
[56:54] Yeah. That's the retention data that we shared with you previously.
[56:57] Okay. Yeah.
[56:57] So we're able to follow cohorts of new teachers. Dr.
[57:01] Lewis a couple of years ago updated the Beginning Teacher Assistance Program
[57:04] standards. And about that time, we saw an uptick in
[57:08] retention rates. So we think we can attribute some of that
[57:12] to us doing a better job of supporting new teachers, which happens through the
[57:16] Beginning Teacher Assistance Program and through these standards that were-
[57:19] But it's not directly tied by knowing they followed
[57:23] this methodology and therefore these are the outcomes as opposed to other
[57:27] methodologies in their mentoring.
[57:29] Right. And I think that's respecting what President Brooks-Miller was
[57:33] saying about, it is a district obligation to be sure they're
[57:36] mentored. And so we try to provide aggregate data that says how are we
[57:40] collectively doing in this area.
[57:43] And one final point, just maybe a recommendation that to have
[57:48] an annual call or not
[57:51] necessarily at our annual conference, but where everybody could participate.
[57:55] At the conference, you have to pick and choose what you're going to
[57:59] participate in. But some method where schools can come
[58:02] together through
[58:04] a facilitation by the department to
[58:08] understand each other's mentoring programs, share best practices, et cetera.
[58:11] In some ways that's kind of happening.
[58:13] The Beginning Teacher Assistance Program happens simultaneous to mentoring,
[58:17] and Dr. Lewis has trainings that happen all across the
[58:21] state for those very same teachers, and that's where she gets the feedback on how
[58:25] mentoring is happening.
[58:26] Oh.
[58:26] We do have a program through MTDS that is for mentors.
[58:29] It's the Foundations of Mentoring.
[58:31] And so they come from around the state and can participate in those programs in
[58:34] their regions, and have a chance to talk to other teachers that are mentors, and
[58:39] develop those skills.
[58:40] Good. Thank you, Dr. Lewis and Dr. Kantnik.
[58:43] Thank you.
[58:44] Any other questions?
[58:45] I have a question, Dr. Lewis and Dr. Kantnik.
[58:48] Will the mentors themselves be required to have a mentor?
[58:54] No, that's not a requirement.
[58:55] Okay.
[58:55] Yeah. It's highly recommended through the standards that they get training,
[59:00] and that's where part of what Dr. Lewis offers is
[59:04] there's a resource for them.
[59:05] Okay. Thank you.
[59:08] Mr. Otto.
[59:09] Yeah, I have a question. Sorry, it's not really on topic, but there's a slide in
[59:13] here about the retention for first year
[59:16] teachers. It shows the line-
[59:19] Yes. Mm-hmm
[59:19] ... and everything. So, it's kind of making me have other questions that aren't
[59:23] really related to the mentor-mentee program, but,
[59:27] I think some information like this or graphics like this on just overall teacher
[59:31] retention and historically would be helpful for
[59:35] us to know. And like I said, this is off topic, but maybe for the future-
[59:38] Yeah
[59:38] ... if we could-
[59:40] We-
[59:41] Yeah, there's an annual recruitment and retention report that gets sent to the
[59:44] general assembly. It gets sent to you first, and includes
[59:48] data just like this, plus additional workforce data, which I think is what you're
[59:52] getting at.
[59:53] We've done, I think, a pretty good job of tracking workforce data over the
[59:57] last several years, and so that's why you're able to see six years of data
[1:00:00] here, because we think the historic trends are really important to watch.
[1:00:04] And so there's a whole report
[1:00:06] that's done each year for you.
[1:00:08] What time of the year?
[1:00:10] December. It's due to the general assembly by the 15th of December.
[1:00:13] So it gets presented to us in the fall.
[1:00:15] Yeah. We provide it to you, and then we send it to them.
[1:00:18] Okay. All right. So we can expect to see that in the-
[1:00:21] And I'm happy to send you last year's if you'd like to see last year's report.
[1:00:24] That'd be helpful. Yeah.
[1:00:25] Okay.
[1:00:25] Thank you.
[1:00:27] Other questions?
[1:00:29] We do have a motion and a second.
[1:00:32] I'll call for the vote. All those in favor of approving?
[1:00:36] Aye.
[1:00:36] Any opposed?
[1:00:39] Hearing none,
[1:00:41] rule passes.
[1:00:42] Thank you.
[1:00:43] Thank you.
[1:00:45] Thanks.
[1:00:54] Paul, it's pretty much your show today, huh?
[1:00:56] Mm-hmm.
[1:00:57] He's taken over.
[1:00:58] Yeah. Anybody need a Tylenol real quick before we go on?
[1:01:02] Okay. I'm now joined by Dr. Daryl Fridley.
[1:01:04] He's the coordinator of educator preparation.
[1:01:07] He manages the approval process for educator preparation programs across the
[1:01:10] state. The approval of these programs is contingent on the
[1:01:14] graduates meeting the certification requirements that are set by you as a board.
[1:01:18] The degree program itself, and the learning content and classes for that degree
[1:01:22] program, are under the authority of the university as they work to
[1:01:26] meet the standards set by the Department of Higher Education and Workforce
[1:01:30] Development. And I just pull that out to help you
[1:01:33] understand your authority as a board is over the requirements of the
[1:01:36] certification itself, not over an actual
[1:01:40] program.
[1:01:41] Being an approved program means that they are able to recommend candidates for
[1:01:45] certification because they have met your requirements that you have set as a board.
[1:01:49] In our office, the Office of Educator Quality, we work directly with educator
[1:01:53] preparation programs. We also issue certificates of licenses
[1:01:57] to teach through our certification system.
[1:01:59] We have, just for some numbers for you, we have about 80,000
[1:02:02] educators in the state. Many of them have multiple areas of certification,
[1:02:06] so our system manages about 600,000 active
[1:02:10] certificates. And then we also support practicing educators who are
[1:02:14] teachers and school leaders, much like the development of the mentor standards for
[1:02:17] new teachers you just heard about in the previous item.
[1:02:20] Thank you.
[1:02:22] One piece of educator quality is the preparation of new teachers.
[1:02:26] As a reminder, there are three main levels the board can use to influence the
[1:02:30] quality and numbers of educators completing educator
[1:02:33] preparation programs. Your first area kind of
[1:02:37] oversight is educator certification.
[1:02:40] You have the authority to alter requirements a candidate must meet to earn
[1:02:43] certification. Recent actions that have been taken by this board
[1:02:47] include a path to certification in middle and secondary computer
[1:02:51] science, also revisions to the requirements for certification of
[1:02:54] literacy specialists. And we'll be doing more of that
[1:02:58] today. The second area is program approval.
[1:03:01] The board decides which institutions and organizations are authorized
[1:03:05] to prepare teachers. And then your third area of oversight is
[1:03:09] annual program accreditation. You determine which of the approved
[1:03:13] educator preparation providers will be eligible to continue
[1:03:17] recommending candidates for certification in the coming year.
[1:03:21] Our recommendations today are related to the first area, educator
[1:03:25] certification. As we already talked about today, those requirements are approved
[1:03:29] by you as a board. Dr. Fridley now will explain the recommendations we are
[1:03:33] bringing to you today in detail.
[1:03:38] Good morning.
[1:03:39] All the recommendations we're bringing to you today are related to the
[1:03:43] process of becoming a teacher and making that process more
[1:03:47] transparent and understandable, and therefore, more
[1:03:50] navigable for individuals who want to become teachers.
[1:03:53] This is in line with the governor's great initiative on
[1:03:57] improving efficiency in government.
[1:04:00] So we want to make it easy to understand the process.
[1:04:05] The first two rules we are recommending for changes are connected to each other.
[1:04:10] I'll just make a note here. In our presentation, we'll refer to just the
[1:04:14] final number. You see the rule numbers are relatively long,
[1:04:19] but they're all in chapter 400, and so we'll just refer to
[1:04:22] 500. The first, Rule 500, is a rule that describes the basic
[1:04:26] requirements for all teacher certifications and all routes by which
[1:04:30] someone can achieve teacher certification.
[1:04:33] The second, 210, describes a path to teacher certification that
[1:04:37] is not included in 500, but should be.
[1:04:46] The general implication of Rule 500 is that it includes all
[1:04:50] routes to teacher certification, but does not
[1:04:54] currently meet that objective. It doesn't include routes that teachers may
[1:04:58] take with the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, or
[1:05:02] ABCTE,
[1:05:03] Teachers of Tomorrow, or via reciprocity with other
[1:05:07] states. To address that, the proposed Rule 500 adds
[1:05:11] ABCTE language
[1:05:13] from 210, adds new language referencing Teachers of Tomorrow,
[1:05:18] and adds a section explaining certification through reciprocity.
[1:05:23] It also clarifies some aspects of the process for adding
[1:05:26] additional certifications.
[1:05:28] Just a quick comment about reciprocity.
[1:05:31] Currently, Missouri has in statute that we accept licenses
[1:05:34] from any other state. We're really one of the few in the country that if you're
[1:05:38] licensed as an elementary teacher in Idaho, you
[1:05:42] get the equivalent comparable certificate in Missouri just by presenting your
[1:05:46] license from that state.
[1:05:48] What Dr. Fridley is describing here is that should be articulated in
[1:05:52] Rule 500, and it's not. And so one of the proposed changes is to get that
[1:05:56] language in there.
[1:06:01] The other main change to 500 is structural, and you'll
[1:06:05] note simply collecting all the requirements for certification into a single
[1:06:09] section instead of several. Again, just trying to make it
[1:06:13] more easy to understand. Having moved the language about
[1:06:17] ABCTE into Rule 500, the related proposal is to rescind Rule
[1:06:21] 210. So if you looked at that in a vacuum, you'd think we were getting rid of
[1:06:25] a particular route, but that's not the case. We're simply moving it.
[1:06:29] I'd also like to note one item that looks like a change, but isn't.
[1:06:32] The requirement for a 3.0 GPA in professional
[1:06:35] education has been removed from this rule.
[1:06:38] That's not a change, a removal to the
[1:06:41] requirements.
[1:06:44] It is in the appropriate rules for all the specific certification
[1:06:47] areas, as you'll see when we get to those rules.
[1:06:49] So it's still a requirement, it's just in its more appropriate place.
[1:06:53] Both of the main advisory groups for educator preparation and certification, the
[1:06:57] Missouri Advisory Board for Educator Preparation, and the Missouri
[1:07:01] Advisory Council of Certification for Educators, have voted
[1:07:05] to approve these two recommendations.
[1:07:09] So we are now on agenda item G.
[1:07:13] With the movement of ABCT out of 210, 210 is no longer
[1:07:17] necessary, and so our recommendation today is
[1:07:21] your authorization to rescind Rule 210.
[1:07:27] Okay, so we have a request.
[1:07:30] Do I hear a motion for the recension of that, is it 210?
[1:07:34] 210, correct.
[1:07:35] Rule 210.
[1:07:36] So moved.
[1:07:37] Second.
[1:07:38] Okay. Carrie Casey,
[1:07:40] Mike Watusik.
[1:07:42] Okay, John.
[1:07:44] In the motion, can
[1:07:46] we clarify that you're rescinding it, but moving it to section 500?
[1:07:50] Well, we will follow that up with H, which talks about-
[1:07:53] Oh, there's another one
[1:07:53] ... all the stuff we've added into 500.
[1:07:55] So that's why we're kind of doing them together with you.
[1:07:57] Got it.
[1:07:59] And to clarify or reconfirm, this is for publication
[1:08:03] in the Missouri Register, so this will come
[1:08:07] before us again-
[1:08:08] It will, yeah
[1:08:09] ... with the comments received and the final recommendation and vote for approval.
[1:08:12] Right. Once they publicize, it'll get 30 days of comment, and then Dr.
[1:08:15] Fridley and I'll be back in September.
[1:08:17] We'll let you know everything we heard about it, and then only then does it become
[1:08:21] official.
[1:08:24] Further questions on it?
[1:08:27] Okay, so
[1:08:28] did you make the motion, Mrs. Casey?
[1:08:32] And you seconded, John?
[1:08:33] I second.
[1:08:34] Okay, Mike.
[1:08:35] So all those in favor of the motion as presented?
[1:08:38] Aye.
[1:08:38] Aye.
[1:08:39] Any opposed?
[1:08:41] Hearing none, that passes.
[1:08:42] Thank you. And then we're on item H, and this one is Rule
[1:08:45] 500, and it now includes ABCTE. It includes Teachers of
[1:08:49] Tomorrow. It includes an explanation of
[1:08:52] reciprocity, and it's got some structural updates, and
[1:08:56] we're asking for your authorization to publicize for public comment of this one as
[1:09:00] well.
[1:09:02] So moved.
[1:09:03] Second.
[1:09:04] Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further questions?
[1:09:09] Thank you for all the information.
[1:09:11] I know a lot of these are
[1:09:14] structural or updates, technical changes,
[1:09:18] consolidating sections, but if there is something in any of
[1:09:22] these that
[1:09:23] is sort of bigger than that or if there's opposing comments
[1:09:27] that, as part of your discussions with stakeholders, it would be helpful to hear
[1:09:31] that. I don't think there usually is.
[1:09:33] Like you said, usually when you bring stuff here,
[1:09:36] you've worked a lot of things out with stakeholders.
[1:09:40] Mm-hmm. We have. And the votes from MACI and MABE are
[1:09:44] important, because that's their chance to
[1:09:48] kind of direct your attention to that, and both were unanimous on these
[1:09:52] being good ideas.
[1:09:53] Thank you.
[1:09:56] Okay, any other questions?
[1:09:58] Excuse me. All those in favor say aye.
[1:10:00] Aye.
[1:10:00] Aye.
[1:10:01] Any opposed?
[1:10:03] Hearing none, that passes as well.
[1:10:04] Thank you.
[1:10:08] The next proposed rule change relates to certification to work with
[1:10:11] children for whom English is not their first language.
[1:10:14] This is an area of increasing need.
[1:10:16] The process of reviewing this rule began with requests from districts actually
[1:10:20] in need of these teachers.
[1:10:23] To accomplish this project, DESE pulled together a work group of educators from
[1:10:26] around the state, and we'd like to right now publicly thank those people for
[1:10:30] their work.
[1:10:33] So you see we have both K12, DESE, higher ed.
[1:10:42] The major revisions recommended by the work group include,
[1:10:46] first, adding a recommendation from an educator preparation provider
[1:10:50] as a requirement for certification.
[1:10:52] Currently, this area is one of the only areas of
[1:10:56] certification in which this is not a requirement.
[1:10:59] This addition will increase accountability and ensure a greater level of quality
[1:11:02] control.
[1:11:04] Next, changing the name of the certification from English Language Learners
[1:11:09] to a certification in English Language Development.
[1:11:14] This makes more sense, and the professionals on the work group
[1:11:18] inform me that that's in line with the language of the field.
[1:11:24] Next, removing some general requirements that are typically included in an
[1:11:27] initial certification. This is similar to previous revisions in other
[1:11:31] advanced areas recently. For example, gifted education
[1:11:35] a year or so ago.
[1:11:40] Revising the competencies to make them more clear and better aligned
[1:11:44] with the field. These more detailed competencies will more
[1:11:48] clearly communicate the state's expectations.
[1:11:50] If you compare those
[1:11:55] recommendations to what is current, you'll see that what is current is
[1:11:59] much more general, much less specific, and they thought it was
[1:12:03] important that they be very clear about what somebody should be able
[1:12:07] to do and know when they get out of a program.
[1:12:10] So is that the
[1:12:12] teacher or the student?
[1:12:14] These are the competencies for the teacher candidates-
[1:12:17] The teacher
[1:12:17] ... coming out who are going to get that certification.
[1:12:19] Thank you.
[1:12:22] And then it does
[1:12:25] reduce the content hours from 18 to 15, and the context is
[1:12:28] initially the group was asked to consider how this area of certification
[1:12:32] might be made available at the initial certification level.
[1:12:35] Currently, it's just an add-on. So you have to have a certification, and then
[1:12:39] you can add it on. After
[1:12:42] investigating that, they found that it was not possible at this time because
[1:12:46] of the difference in content hours.
[1:12:49] But the small reduction in required hours will make it more possible for teacher
[1:12:53] candidates to fit the coursework for this certification into their undergraduate
[1:12:57] experience. So it would not be initial, but it makes
[1:13:01] it easier for a program to integrate that if somebody
[1:13:05] had 15 hours available, had a space available.
[1:13:09] The work group believes that the reduction in hours, and these are people who
[1:13:13] are working with Working in the area, including
[1:13:16] training people, they believe that the reduction in hours will not
[1:13:20] adversely affect the quality of preparation, since the expectations for
[1:13:24] graduates have been made more explicit, and they think that the
[1:13:28] result
[1:13:32] will be more people who have gone through a program who have
[1:13:36] been prepared instead of
[1:13:39] the number of people right now we have who are just filling these positions without
[1:13:42] the training.
[1:13:44] In addition, the work group identified some complications with obtaining
[1:13:48] certification through reciprocity in this area. Dr.
[1:13:52] Kadnick mentioned reciprocity, and
[1:13:55] there are some challenges with that in this particular area as an add-on.
[1:13:59] While the work group was unable to resolve the issue, the Office of
[1:14:03] Educator Quality is working to address this.
[1:14:05] So, I want to point out that even when we can't figure out a way to address an
[1:14:09] issue immediately, we take the input
[1:14:13] from these professional work groups very seriously.
[1:14:16] And so we continue to work on that issue, and we will address it.
[1:14:20] Yeah. The issue with the reciprocity is that this particular certificate is called
[1:14:23] a lot of different things in other states.
[1:14:26] And what statute tells us is we can issue a comparable certificate, and
[1:14:30] so we're trying to match titles, and that's a little problematic
[1:14:34] when the titles don't match up, and then you have to try to get to the
[1:14:38] actual preparation coursework underneath it.
[1:14:40] It's just going to take a little more time for us to figure out a clean way to do
[1:14:43] that. So, we wanted to get these changes moved through now,
[1:14:48] and then we'll go back and try to figure that one out.
[1:14:50] So, we are now on agenda item I.
[1:14:55] So both advisory groups,
[1:14:57] Missouri Advisory Board of Educator Preparation, MABEP, and MAECI, the
[1:15:01] Council for Certification, voted to recommend approval.
[1:15:04] Based on that support, the valuable efforts of the workgroup, and the need for more
[1:15:08] teachers, we are recommending that you authorize publication and allow us
[1:15:12] to put this out for public comment.
[1:15:17] So moved.
[1:15:17] Do we have a motion? Okay. Pamela Westbrook Hodges made the
[1:15:21] motion. Is there-
[1:15:22] Second.
[1:15:22] Okay. Mike Matusik, a second. Are there any further questions on this?
[1:15:26] Mrs. Casey.
[1:15:28] Thank you.
[1:15:29] Could you clarify, if you could go back to the summary of the
[1:15:33] changes, the changing the name of the certification area
[1:15:37] from English Language Learners to Development.
[1:15:40] Is that affecting only the
[1:15:43] EPP program, or is that going to result in changes
[1:15:47] in the program that's actually
[1:15:50] administered in the schools?
[1:15:52] It just changes the title of the certification.
[1:15:56] So schools-- I'm not sure exactly what schools do, but there
[1:16:00] are people in schools on this committee who thought it was
[1:16:04] fine. But it would not automatically change anything in schools.
[1:16:09] It would just say, "This is the certification that the person has."
[1:16:13] And that seems to match nationally what's happening with the title of this
[1:16:17] particular area, and so we didn't want to be out of step with what
[1:16:21] was happening nationally in this area.
[1:16:23] Okay. Thank you.
[1:16:26] Do we have any further questions on this topic?
[1:16:30] Hearing none, all those in favor?
[1:16:33] Aye.
[1:16:33] Aye.
[1:16:34] Is there any opposed?
[1:16:36] Hearing none, the motion passes.
[1:16:38] Thank you. We're down to our set of the final three.
[1:16:45] We brought this last set of recommendations to you first in March, and we did
[1:16:49] a webinar
[1:16:51] to explain that for some. Since that time, we have discussed them with a
[1:16:54] variety of stakeholders, and we've made adjustments accordingly.
[1:17:01] If you'll recall, we mentioned to you in March, for those of you who are here,
[1:17:04] that requirements for certification in 599-12 and
[1:17:08] K-12 areas vary widely. You can see from this chart
[1:17:12] just how different some areas are.
[1:17:15] For example, agricultural education and physical education both
[1:17:19] require more than 50 hours of content.
[1:17:22] While areas like art, computer science, which was just recently approved
[1:17:26] by this board, and world languages, that includes Spanish,
[1:17:29] French, German, require only 30 hours.
[1:17:33] That's a difference of more than a semester's worth of courses.
[1:17:37] There is no clear justification for these differences overall.
[1:17:41] Instead, they are an unintended consequence of DESE's commitment
[1:17:45] to collaborating with practitioners.
[1:17:47] Historically, where groups of content experts were created to determine
[1:17:51] specific certification requirements.
[1:17:54] Those groups worked in relative isolation, however, focusing primarily on the
[1:17:58] content knowledge they thought a teacher would need to be
[1:18:02] aware of,
[1:18:04] and not the broader context in which the teacher is getting that
[1:18:08] training,
[1:18:10] like thinking about the total number of hours and the cost of
[1:18:14] college and those type of things.
[1:18:17] And so we ended up with this disconnected variety of
[1:18:21] requirements. You'll also notice that there are several areas with
[1:18:25] 24-hour requirements. We put those on here because they're a
[1:18:29] part of what we're talking about generally today, but those are the
[1:18:33] 59 or the middle school areas, and we included those just so you'd have
[1:18:37] context for these proposals.
[1:18:42] In addition to differences in content requirements, we also found differences
[1:18:47] in pedagogy requirements across different certification
[1:18:50] paths. For example, the temporary authorization
[1:18:54] certificate in the first column there only requires
[1:18:57] 24 hours focused on teaching skills and knowledge or
[1:19:01] pedagogy,
[1:19:03] while certification in 912 areas requires 36 hours.
[1:19:07] Again, we found no research-based justification for any of
[1:19:11] these wide variations.
[1:19:13] The current structure makes the path to becoming a teacher more confusing and at
[1:19:17] times longer to complete.
[1:19:19] Of course, more time in school has real financial costs, as you can see from the
[1:19:22] blue cells across the middle.
[1:19:25] These are the estimated costs just for the courses required in each
[1:19:29] category. They do not include the cost of an overall college
[1:19:33] degree. So when you look at, say, 9-12,
[1:19:37] those courses,
[1:19:39] those fit into a degree. The
[1:19:43] TAC, the TAC, and the alt cert are on top of a degree because
[1:19:47] you have to have a degree first to be in those programs.
[1:19:50] So we're talking about very real financial
[1:19:54] barriers to students moving forward and becoming
[1:19:58] well-prepared teachers.
[1:20:03] We chose to address these particular grade levels because the percentage of
[1:20:06] comprehensively prepared teachers is lower in these grades than in the
[1:20:10] overall first-year population. When we shared this
[1:20:14] chart in March, Ms. Westbrook-Hodge requested that these data
[1:20:18] be disaggregated further according to a measure of
[1:20:22] effectiveness.
[1:20:25] So in response, we divided first-year teachers into two
[1:20:29] groups, those who were hired in school districts whose most
[1:20:32] recent APR score was 80 or above, and those hired in
[1:20:36] districts with an annual performance report score below 80.
[1:20:41] This chart shows the distribution of first-year teachers in the higher-scoring
[1:20:45] school districts. You may note that the percentage of teachers comprehensively
[1:20:48] prepared by a Missouri educator preparation provider is higher than the
[1:20:52] percentage in the overall chart we just showed
[1:20:57] in the previous slide. And the percentage of teachers with either no
[1:21:00] certification or only substitute teacher licenses is much lower
[1:21:04] also.
[1:21:05] So, for our new board members, our existing board members have
[1:21:09] seen this data a couple of times already.
[1:21:12] But we've taken a cohort of first-year teachers, and we've asked the question: How
[1:21:16] did they get to become a first-year teacher?
[1:21:18] And the dark green went through a traditionally prepared
[1:21:21] program. Those are the ones with higher effectiveness, higher
[1:21:25] retention rates. That's the desired route.
[1:21:28] Then there are folks who come through either from a different state through that
[1:21:32] reciprocity we've talked about, or they're coming through an alternative area,
[1:21:36] which eventually they'll join the people in the green, but they're not
[1:21:39] done yet. But they're already in front of a classroom of teachers, teaching while
[1:21:43] they're finishing.
[1:21:45] The yellow are two legislatively mandated
[1:21:49] routes. That's ABCTE and Teachers of Tomorrow.
[1:21:53] And then we have teachers who are only on a sub cert or don't have any
[1:21:57] area certification who are also teaching students.
[1:22:00] And this is what that cohort looks like when the school district's
[1:22:03] APR is 80 or above, meaning they're a higher-performing school
[1:22:07] district. Dr. Fridley will show you next what happens when we look at the school
[1:22:11] districts below 80, so it's a lower-performing school
[1:22:15] district.
[1:22:16] And I would also mention, if somebody might ask, "Well, why do we care about this?"
[1:22:19] We do have
[1:22:21] data, for example, that those who finish a comprehensive program
[1:22:25] have a higher retention by 15 to 20 points over
[1:22:30] many of the others. As you can imagine, people who come in with just a
[1:22:33] substitute certification are not as likely to stay.
[1:22:37] So in terms of the mentoring that Dr.
[1:22:39] Lewis was talking about, you're starting over again each year
[1:22:43] instead of that consistent mentoring over multiple years.
[1:22:48] And that little light green slot there is worth noting.
[1:22:52] Those are people who are provisionally--
[1:22:55] they're nearly completed. They're on a provisional because they're close to being
[1:22:59] done.
[1:23:00] We refer to those often as student teachers of record.
[1:23:04] Those are student teachers who are not having the
[1:23:08] full student teacher experience.
[1:23:10] They are the teachers of record while they're doing that final internship.
[1:23:15] And last semester, in the fall semester of this year, about a
[1:23:19] quarter of our student teachers in the state were functioning
[1:23:22] as teachers of record. So that changes things.
[1:23:25] The other thing that I would note about the dark green, the comprehensively
[1:23:29] prepared, that's the area in which this board and this
[1:23:32] department has the most oversight.
[1:23:35] When we talk about the changes that we're going to suggest here,
[1:23:38] they affect the dark green the most.
[1:23:41] If we're going to
[1:23:43] affect somebody's preparation before they go into teaching, that's where
[1:23:47] we can have that
[1:23:49] influence. So we care about that because we can improve
[1:23:53] things in that area much more than we can, say, out of state or even the
[1:23:57] alt cert, where they're going to have the experience, but they're not going to get
[1:24:00] it before they start teaching.
[1:24:02] Mm-hmm.
[1:24:05] So this chart shows the same distribution in school districts scoring below 80
[1:24:09] on the most recent annual performance report.
[1:24:12] The percentage of teachers comprehensively prepared by Missouri educator
[1:24:15] preparation providers is more than 15 percentage points lower
[1:24:19] than in the previous group, and the percentage of teachers with no certification
[1:24:23] or only a substitute license is more than 15 percentages higher,
[1:24:27] percentage points higher.
[1:24:29] Assuming these districts hire this large number of unprepared first-year
[1:24:33] teachers, at least in part because they are having difficulty finding
[1:24:37] qualified teachers, increasing the number of comprehensively prepared
[1:24:41] teachers will benefit these school districts most.
[1:24:44] The following proposals are intended to do just that.
[1:24:51] It's within this context just described that the department is proposing these
[1:24:55] changes to all certification areas for grades five through nine,
[1:25:00] nine through 12. So the five through nine would be typically middle school, nine
[1:25:04] through 12 high school, secondary.
[1:25:06] And K through 12, which are areas that cover the entire
[1:25:10] gamut, like art and music.
[1:25:13] So one thing it would do is it would set required pedagogical knowledge for all
[1:25:17] three areas to 24 hours. This would bring these areas in line
[1:25:20] with the 24 hours already approved by this board for the
[1:25:24] temporary authorization certificate.
[1:25:27] Certification. Within those 24 hours, they would remain or require
[1:25:33] three hours dedicated to literacy instruction.
[1:25:36] This is the number of hours already approved for K-12 certifications
[1:25:40] and is more than is currently required for a temporary authorization certificate.
[1:25:45] Recent changes have made literacy requirements more explicit in these areas,
[1:25:49] and we will revisit those in the near future to make sure that
[1:25:52] teachers are well prepared to support reading development in older
[1:25:55] children.
[1:26:02] In terms of content knowledge, these changes would
[1:26:07] move the
[1:26:08] requirement for 5-9 to 21
[1:26:12] hours, and the minimum requirement
[1:26:16] for 9-12 and K-12 to 30 hours.
[1:26:19] Those must be aligned with the Missouri
[1:26:23] Learning Standards and the certification test framework.
[1:26:31] While this change will result in a significant reduction in hours in some areas, 10
[1:26:35] of the 24 9 through 12 and K-12 areas
[1:26:39] already have requirements within three hours of the proposed
[1:26:43] rules of 30, and those are indicated by the green bars.
[1:26:46] So, you can see that while it'd be a big change for some areas,
[1:26:50] on the whole, it's not
[1:26:54] a major change. It should also be noted that
[1:26:57] institutional
[1:27:01] programs are free to require more hours.
[1:27:04] This is just setting a state minimum that
[1:27:07] institutions
[1:27:09] cannot go lower than. And again, we've already approved several
[1:27:13] programs at 30.
[1:27:18] So, when I first started visiting with you this morning, I talked about that
[1:27:22] preparation phase that happens even before we get to a day like
[1:27:26] today, where we're sitting in front of you, and I mentioned that sometimes it could
[1:27:29] be two years of work that happens before we even show up
[1:27:33] here. This is an area where we've spent that much time, because
[1:27:37] it's a bit of a significant shift, and we wanted to make sure we talked to
[1:27:40] everybody. The tension we're trying to get right is to make
[1:27:44] it easier to understand to be a teacher, and to make sure
[1:27:48] that they have what they need to be successful, but not too
[1:27:52] much. And if we can't defend some areas having
[1:27:56] 50 hours while others have 30, then we have to really take a look at that, and
[1:28:00] that's what we've been exploring for two years.
[1:28:02] That's the big number of groups that we've been talking to,
[1:28:06] checking this out. We've visited with these different content areas.
[1:28:10] We've run numbers of what we think the benefit will be to the state, and some of
[1:28:13] those benefits are immediate. For example, if there are PE
[1:28:17] candidates out there that have 30 hours today and are still
[1:28:21] needing to take 20 hours to be a PE teacher, with this
[1:28:25] change, they could immediately be eligible to be a teacher.
[1:28:27] So, it's going to get us more teachers in the classrooms.
[1:28:30] And not only more teachers, but more comprehensively prepared teachers, which
[1:28:34] is that dark green, which are our best candidates for being
[1:28:38] effective teachers and best retention rates.
[1:28:41] And that's what we're trying to accomplish here.
[1:28:43] We took this, as we always do, before both advisory groups, our MABEP group
[1:28:47] and our MACE group, which you've heard about all morning.
[1:28:50] And both of them have voted to approve this revision.
[1:28:53] And based on that support, the need for more teachers in
[1:28:57] these areas, we are recommending your support on this.
[1:29:01] So, we'll start with item J. This is for our 5-9 middle
[1:29:05] schoolers. We're asking for your authority to publicize
[1:29:09] this rule and get public comment that we'll bring back to you in September.
[1:29:15] So moved.
[1:29:16] Second.
[1:29:17] So, we have a motion and a second. Are there any other questions that come
[1:29:21] before us on this?
[1:29:25] No question. Just a comment. I know the rule-making processes
[1:29:29] can take many, many months or years in this case, and
[1:29:34] we're sort of getting through all of this in 45 minutes or something.
[1:29:37] But I do appreciate the way you guys present the information, hit the high
[1:29:41] points. I like the visuals personally.
[1:29:44] It makes it easier for me to understand.
[1:29:46] But I know it takes a lot of work to get to this point and still a lot of work to
[1:29:50] be done after. So, just wanted to say thank you
[1:29:52] for both being comprehensive in your
[1:29:56] explanation
[1:29:57] and making it
[1:29:59] relatively quick, right? So we're not here for six... But thank you.
[1:30:02] I think you guys do great.
[1:30:04] Thank you.
[1:30:05] President Miller.
[1:30:06] Yeah.
[1:30:06] I do have one comment.
[1:30:08] Please proceed.
[1:30:08] Thank you. And I echo that.
[1:30:11] I really do appreciate, it's difficult when we're reading
[1:30:15] the narrative, if you will, in our preparation, so to have this summary
[1:30:18] is very helpful.
[1:30:21] When you do come back, because this is for posting
[1:30:25] to go out into the register, and you'll be coming back for our
[1:30:29] final approval, this item as well.
[1:30:31] We anticipate September.
[1:30:33] Good. When you do come back, as this as with any
[1:30:36] other recommendation where appropriate, I would like you to present
[1:30:40] how
[1:30:42] you are going to be able to track the effectiveness of this
[1:30:46] change.
[1:30:48] And I realize that won't be instantaneous.
[1:30:50] It would take a period of time, but what would you do to better
[1:30:54] isolate academic outcomes
[1:30:57] associated to this change, or retention, or both?
[1:31:01] We can certainly do that.
[1:31:02] Thank you.
[1:31:05] Okay. Any other questions?
[1:31:10] All those in favor say aye.
[1:31:11] Aye.
[1:31:12] Any opposed?
[1:31:14] Hearing none, that motion passes.
[1:31:16] Thank you. Item K, this is now for 9-12, so these are our high school, 9
[1:31:20] through 12. Same actions to standardize the pedagogy and the content
[1:31:24] hours. We're asking for your authorization to publicize this rule.
[1:31:28] So moved.
[1:31:29] Second.
[1:31:30] We have a motion and a second. Are there any questions with regards to this?
[1:31:35] Hearing none. All those in favor say aye.
[1:31:38] Aye.
[1:31:38] Aye.
[1:31:39] Any opposed?
[1:31:41] Hearing none.
[1:31:43] Thank you. And item L, this is now for K12 education, and the exact
[1:31:47] same changes to this one.
[1:31:48] So moved.
[1:31:49] We have a motion.
[1:31:51] Second.
[1:31:51] And a second. Any questions on this?
[1:31:56] Okay, call for the vote.
[1:31:57] All those in favor, say aye.
[1:32:00] Aye.
[1:32:00] Aye.
[1:32:01] Any opposed, likewise?
[1:32:04] Okay.
[1:32:04] Thank you.
[1:32:05] Thank you.
[1:32:14] So now we're down to, let's see here,
[1:32:18] letter M.
[1:32:21] Ivy.
[1:32:22] L.
[1:32:22] Is it L?
[1:32:24] L.
[1:32:25] No.
[1:32:25] No. It's Ivy.
[1:32:26] Here.
[1:32:26] Yeah.
[1:32:29] President Miller?
[1:32:32] Would you introduce yourself?
[1:32:33] I will. I'm Lisa Ivy. I'm a program administrator at the Office of
[1:32:37] Childhood.
[1:32:43] Okay. Thank you.
[1:32:45] Okay. So good morning, and just thank you for this opportunity to follow up
[1:32:49] on this. So just to remind the board, this is a
[1:32:53] follow-up to the rule amendment that we presented back in
[1:32:57] March.
[1:32:58] So this has gone out for the 30-day comment, so we are
[1:33:02] back in front of you guys today to do the
[1:33:05] final order.
[1:33:09] Okay.
[1:33:11] Just a little bit of history about this to reiterate what we presented back in
[1:33:15] March. But the rule itself is remaining the same.
[1:33:18] However, we are requesting an amendment to the incorporated by reference
[1:33:22] material that is part of that rule.
[1:33:25] That incorporated by reference material is the Early Childhood
[1:33:29] Development Act Administrative Manual.
[1:33:35] That administrative manual is made up of
[1:33:38] 10 items that are required.
[1:33:42] We are requesting to amend three of those
[1:33:45] items. The first item that we are requesting is an
[1:33:49] amendment so that the parent educators are able to attend
[1:33:52] eligibility meetings with families that are connecting to the First
[1:33:56] Steps or to Early Childhood Special Education Services.
[1:34:00] This is an opportunity for the parent educators to provide support for
[1:34:04] that family when families are going through that eligibility
[1:34:08] process.
[1:34:11] And then within that same item, we are also asking to
[1:34:14] expand the language for mass screenings, developmental
[1:34:18] screenings, which encourages more screenings for all children under
[1:34:22] the age of kindergarten entry.
[1:34:28] In addition, we're asking to amend item
[1:34:32] five, which is the language around curriculum and
[1:34:35] training. So this is required by the Parents as Teachers
[1:34:39] National Center, and the National Center has gone through a name
[1:34:43] change with their curriculum, and we are requesting to update the language
[1:34:47] in our administrative manual to reflect that name change of the National Center.
[1:34:52] And last is item six.
[1:34:55] This item is around data-sharing agreements.
[1:34:58] So this is a practice that we've actually had in place for a couple of years
[1:35:02] now. But it has been outside of the scope of the
[1:35:05] administrative manual, so we want to update the administrative manual for some of
[1:35:09] those data-sharing agreements.
[1:35:14] So, as I had mentioned, this had gone out for public comment.
[1:35:18] We did not have any
[1:35:21] comments outside of our department.
[1:35:22] The department did make two internal comments.
[1:35:26] One of those was an error that was in the website link, to review
[1:35:30] the incorporated by reference material, so we did have the website link
[1:35:33] updated to reflect the current link.
[1:35:36] And then the second internal department comment is where we
[1:35:40] identified an additional clarification that was needed, and this was
[1:35:44] just to ensure some clear requirements and interpretation around personal
[1:35:47] visit and the documentation around that.
[1:35:55] So barring no questions,
[1:35:57] the department is recommending that the State Board of Education issue an order of
[1:36:01] rulemaking to amend the 5 CSR
[1:36:04] 25-100.330.
[1:36:11] We have a rec-
[1:36:11] So moved.
[1:36:12] Mike Matusik makes a motion. Second?
[1:36:15] Second.
[1:36:16] Otto, making the second. Any further questions on this subject?
[1:36:21] Thank you for the information. So again, just a general question.
[1:36:25] In the development of this,
[1:36:28] I know there were no comments obviously, but are
[1:36:32] these again just technical kind of updates,
[1:36:35] so no opposition from anybody that you're aware of?
[1:36:38] No. We did not receive any public comments.
[1:36:41] In the creation of this, or the revision of the administrative manual, there is a
[1:36:45] stakeholder group that composes of several of our parent
[1:36:49] educators, in addition to the Parents as Teachers National
[1:36:52] Center and the Missouri
[1:36:55] Parents as Teachers Association.
[1:36:57] So they were all involved in the revision of these documents.
[1:37:00] Thank you.
[1:37:01] Mm-hmm.
[1:37:03] Other questions?
[1:37:04] Just a comment on the Parents as Teachers.
[1:37:06] My mom excuse me,
[1:37:09] was a
[1:37:11] classroom teacher for 30 years, then 20 years as Parents as Teachers,
[1:37:15] and she passed away last week.
[1:37:19] But the number of families, I'm sorry, that came forward on
[1:37:23] those visits, and the difference it made,
[1:37:26] if you don't know about the Parents as Teachers program, it is
[1:37:30] something that's worth examining because it makes a real difference,
[1:37:33] especially in certain neighborhoods.
[1:37:35] And
[1:37:36] I got to hear those testimonies last week.
[1:37:40] I appreciate that. Thank you.
[1:37:41] Thank you, Robert. Appreciate that
[1:37:45] Any other comments, questions?
[1:37:49] Hearing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, please say aye.
[1:37:52] Aye.
[1:37:53] Any opposition?
[1:37:56] And that is unanimous. Thank you for your work on that.
[1:37:58] Thank you.
[1:38:00] Okay. I think right now we're going to take a short break.
[1:38:03] And if you would, we'll go for 15 minutes.
[1:38:06] So if you'd come back at 10:20, we'd appreciate it.
[1:43:39] On behalf of
[1:43:43] the American Marketing Association, please accept this certificate commemorating
[1:43:45] your-
[1:52:54] On our agenda, we are down to
[1:52:59] letter N
[1:53:00] of 11, and so that's
[1:53:04] Dr. Sereno. And so,
[1:53:07] we welcome your group here. It seems like you brought the whole team, or most of
[1:53:11] the team, so look forward to your presentation.
[1:53:13] Thank you, President Miller. Again, my name is Lisa Sereno.
[1:53:17] I'm Assistant Commissioner in the Office of Quality Schools.
[1:53:20] And, with me today is Shaneka Williams, who is our Director of
[1:53:24] Charter Schools.
[1:53:26] We're here to review applications for renewal
[1:53:30] of charters for two schools, and we're going to
[1:53:34] begin with Hope Leadership Academy.
[1:53:37] It's located in Kansas City, and it is sponsored by St.
[1:53:41] Louis University. And so I'd like to introduce the folks from
[1:53:46] SLU who are with us here today. Alexandra Boyd
[1:53:49] is Assistant Dean of School and Community Partnership.
[1:53:54] Benton Brown is Assistant Dean of Teacher Education.
[1:53:58] And Casey Shahid
[1:54:02] focuses on leadership in the college.
[1:54:05] Have I got you all correct, doctors?
[1:54:08] Yeah.
[1:54:08] All right.
[1:54:10] Before I turn the presentation over to Shaneka, and then
[1:54:13] ultimately to the sponsors, I just want to outline
[1:54:17] for you what you're going to hear in this presentation.
[1:54:22] Shaneka's going to give you just a brief reminder of how
[1:54:25] renewal fits in with the other charter tasks
[1:54:29] for the department and for you as a state board of education.
[1:54:34] She's going to talk about how DESE reviews the materials and
[1:54:38] looks at the sponsor's renewal decision-making process,
[1:54:43] and hit the high points of the statutory requirements
[1:54:47] for renewal considerations.
[1:54:50] She's also going to talk a little bit about our focus on the
[1:54:54] performance expectations in the contract between the
[1:54:58] charter school and the sponsor itself, and how
[1:55:02] we view that in terms of how it plays into the renewal
[1:55:05] decision.
[1:55:07] And then one other thing before I turn it over to these
[1:55:11] folks is that,
[1:55:13] just a reminder, renewals under statute are authorized
[1:55:17] by the sponsors. And in most cases,
[1:55:21] DESE will put these in the consent agenda and present them to
[1:55:25] you as a board for ratification.
[1:55:28] Once in a while, there will be something that
[1:55:32] calls our attention, and we will
[1:55:36] pull those out and actually want this board to
[1:55:40] discuss and review in a little bit more detail.
[1:55:43] And the situation for Hope Leadership Academy, we had
[1:55:47] concerns about the academic category in the performance
[1:55:51] contract and the student performance.
[1:55:54] And so,
[1:55:56] Shaneka did ask the sponsor to come and
[1:55:59] describe to you their decision-making process
[1:56:04] around this renewal
[1:56:06] And she's got, as I said, she has some things that she would like to review with
[1:56:10] you. So I'll turn it over to Shanika.
[1:56:12] All right. Thank you.
[1:56:15] So first, let's talk about authority.
[1:56:18] Now, the authority for charter schools is spread
[1:56:22] across multiple entities, from the legislation that
[1:56:26] make the laws and the State Board of Education that enforce those
[1:56:29] laws, and the charter sponsor that oversees and monitors
[1:56:33] the charter school, and the charter school board
[1:56:38] that governs the LEA.
[1:56:42] Today, we are going to focus on the State Board of Education's
[1:56:46] primary role related to sponsor activities.
[1:56:49] And as you can see up here, the State Board reviews and
[1:56:53] approves sponsorship applications,
[1:56:56] enforces regulations when it comes to sponsoring,
[1:57:01] evaluates sponsors every three years or
[1:57:05] for cause.
[1:57:07] SLU's next evaluation is going to be the school year
[1:57:10] '27, '28.
[1:57:14] You also review renewal applications and
[1:57:18] new charter school applications.
[1:57:21] The sponsor is responsible for having a policy and
[1:57:24] process for renewals and new applications,
[1:57:29] and approving those applications before they are sent to DESE,
[1:57:33] and ultimately, the State Board.
[1:57:37] Shall we pause for a question?
[1:57:40] Yes, ma'am. Yes.
[1:57:42] And I'll be brief.
[1:57:43] Mm-hmm.
[1:57:44] So can you clarify for this board,
[1:57:47] in particular, we have a lot of new members,
[1:57:50] precisely what the State Board is
[1:57:53] approving today?
[1:57:55] So, what
[1:57:57] we ask for at the end of each renewal, and you will see the
[1:58:00] language, is basically, we are recommending
[1:58:04] to you the sponsor's recommendation.
[1:58:08] So you are approving that we looked over that
[1:58:12] application, and we saw that there are no statutory
[1:58:15] discrepancies,
[1:58:21] thank you, and that everything checks out, and we're sending
[1:58:25] that to you to say, "Yes, you have met all the
[1:58:29] statutory requirements. We
[1:58:31] will
[1:58:36] send forth the sponsor's approval for this application."
[1:58:40] So basically, you're saying that they met all the statutory requirements
[1:58:44] for that.
[1:58:46] What you do do is when that sponsor is
[1:58:49] evaluated, we also evaluate all renewals that were
[1:58:53] in that timeframe. So we look at the renewals that might have
[1:58:57] seemed a little bit on the line or on the cuff, and we go
[1:59:01] through that process that that sponsor takes, and we evaluate that
[1:59:04] sponsor based on the renewal decisions that they have made.
[1:59:09] So today, the recommendation that we're
[1:59:12] presenting is the sponsor's
[1:59:17] authorization to renew for five years.
[1:59:20] And you will see when you look at the recommendation language and when we get to
[1:59:23] that,
[1:59:24] that language is a little bit different this time than
[1:59:28] is typical. Usually, the language is just we
[1:59:33] present the sponsor's recommendation for renewal for the five-year
[1:59:36] period,
[1:59:38] as outlined in its contract with the charter school.
[1:59:42] In this case,
[1:59:45] we are adding a contingency to that-
[1:59:48] Yes
[1:59:49] ... motion, which asks the sponsor to come back
[1:59:52] and
[1:59:54] renew its review
[1:59:56] and provide information to the department and the board after
[2:00:00] the '26, '27 school year.
[2:00:03] So, to keep it really clear and succinct, our yes
[2:00:07] vote today means what?
[2:00:09] Yes vote today means you authorize continuation
[2:00:13] of the charter school.
[2:00:15] And a no vote means?
[2:00:18] No vote would
[2:00:21] mean that you would not ratify the
[2:00:24] sponsor's renewal. State
[2:00:27] statute says that, and I'm
[2:00:30] paraphrasing-
[2:00:32] Mm-hmm
[2:00:32] ... if we need Megan to clarify, we can, or Shanika.
[2:00:35] Mm-hmm.
[2:00:36] The state statute says that if the sponsor
[2:00:39] authorizes the renewal, and the department
[2:00:43] and the board find that it's in statutory
[2:00:46] compliance, that the State Board shall approve the renewal.
[2:00:50] And it does say "shall." And so we get all the information and
[2:00:54] the data and the documentation from the sponsor.
[2:00:58] We review that, and using the data requested, and
[2:01:02] this is in Statute
[2:01:04] 160.405.9, using the
[2:01:08] data requested and the revised charter application under
[2:01:11] paragraphs A and B of that same statute, the State
[2:01:15] Board of Education shall determine if compliance with all
[2:01:19] standards
[2:01:21] were met in this subsection. The State Board of
[2:01:24] Education, at its regular scheduled meeting, shall vote
[2:01:28] on the revised charter application.
[2:01:34] Thank you.
[2:01:37] So that's where we are currently.
[2:01:40] We have reviewed these charter applications.
[2:01:43] We have also talked to the sponsors.
[2:01:46] So I'm going to talk a little bit about our process as
[2:01:48] well. As you can see, you have the profile for the
[2:01:52] school that is being renewed currently, Hope Leadership Academy.
[2:01:56] They are currently sponsored by St. Louis University.
[2:01:59] Their previous sponsor was the University of Central Missouri.
[2:02:02] So within this five-year contract, the University of Central Missouri
[2:02:06] was sponsoring the school for the first year, and St.
[2:02:10] Louis University took over that contract for the rest of the
[2:02:14] term
[2:02:15] Our process in the office of DESE is to get the application from the
[2:02:19] sponsor. We look through the application for
[2:02:22] compliance to statute, making sure that they have met all
[2:02:26] the
[2:02:27] regulations that they should meet as far as the renewal goes.
[2:02:31] After review, we go back to the sponsor and ask any lingering
[2:02:35] questions. Is there something that we saw that wasn't
[2:02:39] quite up to standard?
[2:02:41] Does the data look a little iffy? We will talk to the sponsor about
[2:02:45] that, and we will start to
[2:02:48] look for ways that they could either
[2:02:52] not go back, but go forward, looking at their
[2:02:55] contracts and looking at
[2:02:58] their performance goals and what that looks like moving forward.
[2:03:02] Because by the time the application gets to us, the sponsor has made
[2:03:06] their decision,
[2:03:08] and
[2:03:09] their decision to renew. If it's a decision not to renew, we wouldn't get
[2:03:13] an application.
[2:03:21] So here you will see enrollment for Hope Leadership Academy.
[2:03:24] It remained around 100 plus students for the last five
[2:03:28] years. Now, one of the questions that we talked about with the sponsor
[2:03:32] is that Hope has put in a request to
[2:03:36] increase enrollment next school year to 300.
[2:03:39] We will discuss that a little further on in the renewal,
[2:03:44] but the sponsor is also ready to discuss that as
[2:03:48] well.
[2:03:52] Here, you will see the demographics for the school.
[2:03:55] All this is the same in both renewals, so you will see this
[2:03:58] information. And again, this information is
[2:04:02] for informational purposes only.
[2:04:04] It is not necessarily something that the sponsor looks at when they're making
[2:04:08] their decision to renew.
[2:04:13] This is 90/90 attendance. Now, this is the
[2:04:17] school, Hope Leadership Academy,
[2:04:20] beside Missouri as a whole. This is not something that the
[2:04:24] sponsor would normally look at, but the sponsor does take into
[2:04:27] consideration the 90/90 attendance of its schools,
[2:04:31] and the sponsor has already talked about things that the school is currently
[2:04:35] working on to raise attendance. They're looking at
[2:04:39] a three-tier system that they're going to be working on, Hope is going to be
[2:04:43] working on. So the sponsor has discussed these changes with the school
[2:04:47] already.
[2:04:51] This is your assessment slide, and
[2:04:55] so it talks about the performance of Hope Leadership Academy,
[2:04:59] KCPS, and Missouri.
[2:05:01] Now, again, a lot of these things the sponsor does not look at when it comes
[2:05:06] to making a decision, or they may consider.
[2:05:09] But one of the things that the sponsor has to consider, and is in
[2:05:12] statute, is how the school stacks up to the local district,
[2:05:16] not the state. So that state part is just for your
[2:05:20] information, and this is performance data.
[2:05:26] You see the same in math as well.
[2:05:30] Can we pause there?
[2:05:31] Yep.
[2:05:31] Just one thing before you move on. I was trying to get this with attendance.
[2:05:35] Could you just very quickly explain what the 90/90 attendance rule is in case
[2:05:39] that's not clear? It's part of the accountability system.
[2:05:42] Sure.
[2:05:44] Just a sentence or two.
[2:05:45] It's
[2:05:46] a measure
[2:05:48] of--
[2:05:50] The goal is that
[2:05:53] 90% of our students are, 90% or more, are
[2:05:57] in school 90% or more of the time,
[2:06:02] attending school.
[2:06:03] Anything above 10% is
[2:06:07] considered chronic absenteeism.
[2:06:09] So that 90% benchmark is an
[2:06:13] important one.
[2:06:15] It is one of those things that is also reviewed with the
[2:06:18] APR score, so it's a part of that whole thing.
[2:06:23] So could I just follow up on-
[2:06:24] Mm-hmm
[2:06:24] ... that a little bit? So I was kind of impressed that
[2:06:29] academically, they seemed to be either equal to or
[2:06:33] above the local public school.
[2:06:36] But with a 90% being out of compliance
[2:06:39] there,
[2:06:41] I mean, I know that that's a chronic issue in public schools and charter
[2:06:45] schools probably as well. But
[2:06:48] what are they doing to bring those students up who are chronically
[2:06:52] absent?
[2:06:52] Well, that's a great question, and that's one of those questions that we talked to
[2:06:55] the sponsor about. So maybe Alexandra, can you talk about the
[2:06:59] three-tiered monitoring or
[2:07:03] three-tiered chronic absenteeism system that they're working on?
[2:07:07] Yeah. Thank you so much. Alexandra Boyd, St.
[2:07:10] Louis University. So the school
[2:07:14] is very much aware of the attendance
[2:07:17] concerns. The students are in pre-K
[2:07:21] five, and I will note that
[2:07:25] pre-K students, this was their first year having pre-K, and so getting that
[2:07:30] kind of
[2:07:32] routine in place
[2:07:34] did take a while. But they're going to essentially have a
[2:07:37] three-tiered assessment to do
[2:07:41] school-wide. Tier one is school-wide incentives for everybody, positive
[2:07:44] recognition, consistent communication with parents and things like that for
[2:07:48] attendance. Tier two is conferences with families who
[2:07:52] might be starting to get close to that
[2:07:55] 10%
[2:07:57] high absenteeism rate, and they will have those, and
[2:08:01] kind of improvement plans, and ways to support the family
[2:08:05] should there be barriers to them getting their children to school
[2:08:09] on time. And then tier three, they will use individualized
[2:08:13] support and intensive case management So they will use
[2:08:17] a little team to support acute needs in terms
[2:08:20] of supporting attendance across the school.
[2:08:24] They're going to conduct weekly reviews,
[2:08:28] and they're going to do same-day outreach phone calls
[2:08:32] with structured follow-up within 48 hours
[2:08:35] of students missing.
[2:08:38] And then they'll also have established grade-level attendance goals and monitor
[2:08:42] progress and celebrate success there.
[2:08:45] So those are their plans for improving attendance
[2:08:49] rates.
[2:08:49] And these are some of the things that we talk about during the renewal
[2:08:53] application process. So when we meet with the sponsor and we see
[2:08:57] these things, we go back and say, "So what is going on?
[2:09:00] What have you talked about with the school?
[2:09:01] What is changing
[2:09:04] that you see that makes you want to renew this school?" And the
[2:09:08] sponsor's going to talk a lot more about that later.
[2:09:10] And also,
[2:09:12] on these measures, how does a sponsor hold the school accountable for these
[2:09:16] things?
[2:09:16] Absolutely.
[2:09:17] Are they part of that performance contract?
[2:09:20] Thank you. I guess a question on attendance, and maybe it
[2:09:24] goes to the authority of a charter school, but if you have students
[2:09:28] who are
[2:09:30] at school less than 50% of the time,
[2:09:34] does the school have a
[2:09:37] mechanism to
[2:09:40] get rid of that student? I'm not saying get rid of
[2:09:44] the student, but what happens, right?
[2:09:46] If you have students attending a charter school and they're only showing up one or
[2:09:50] two days a week,
[2:09:52] and I think a lot of charter schools have some kind of lottery process to get
[2:09:56] into them,
[2:09:58] you probably have a long waiting list of students whose attendance might be better.
[2:10:02] How does that work?
[2:10:04] Yeah. That's a really great question.
[2:10:05] I just want to point out that this chart is saying that
[2:10:10] 56% of the students attend 90% of the time,
[2:10:14] not that they attend 50% of the time.
[2:10:17] And so
[2:10:20] I think it's the same for all public schools in the state, right?
[2:10:24] You have an attendance problem, you work to support the family to
[2:10:28] see what the problem is. If attendance persists, you could work with a
[2:10:32] truancy officer if that's the right way to go.
[2:10:35] And then if the
[2:10:39] family and the student don't come after...
[2:10:43] I get my states mixed up. I've been in a couple of states doing this work.
[2:10:47] I think it's 10 days. If they're gone for more than 10 consecutive days, you
[2:10:51] can un-enroll that student.
[2:10:54] That's for 10 consecutive days.
[2:10:55] Yeah, and that's for any
[2:10:57] school district.
[2:10:58] Thank you.
[2:10:59] President Miller.
[2:11:01] I've got a question.
[2:11:04] What percentage of these days would you say are a family
[2:11:07] vacation or a doctor's appointment or things of that nature that
[2:11:11] could be put into this data that would swing it one way or another?
[2:11:15] I don't have that
[2:11:19] level of data. What I would suspect, though, just from having my own
[2:11:23] child in elementary school, is that a majority of it
[2:11:27] is them being sick or because they're a
[2:11:31] small child, their parents might be sick and might not be able to make it.
[2:11:35] And I'm clearly biased. My son has asthma, so that's why he's
[2:11:39] out more than he should be.
[2:11:40] Oh, thank you for answering that. So
[2:11:43] what I'm hearing is there's no quantifiable data that
[2:11:47] you all have.
[2:11:48] The data exists-
[2:11:49] Okay
[2:11:49] ... I just don't have that level of detail in front of me right now.
[2:11:51] Got you. Okay.
[2:11:52] Yes.
[2:11:52] No, thank you.
[2:11:54] Mrs. Casey.
[2:11:55] Thank you, President Miller, and I'd like to address this both to
[2:11:59] the full board, but also our new commissioner.
[2:12:03] Attendance and chronic absenteeism is a critical concern, as has
[2:12:06] been noted by many here,
[2:12:09] not only across the state of Missouri, but across the nation.
[2:12:13] We've raised it in past meetings. We've heard from different
[2:12:16] schools on the three-tier plan on various
[2:12:20] mechanisms where they have been successful.
[2:12:24] Not necessarily, though, utilized in all schools, and maybe
[2:12:28] not all consistently successful.
[2:12:31] What I want to recommend, there is a
[2:12:34] lot of work being done, in particular by one
[2:12:38] organization called Attendance Works,
[2:12:41] and that we take this into either our retreat
[2:12:44] or a planned future discussion
[2:12:48] where we, one, delve into this issue with very good
[2:12:52] data from around the state on what's happening with chronic
[2:12:56] absenteeism across our districts, where programs are
[2:13:00] working, where they're not, why is the absenteeism occurring.
[2:13:04] Just do a thorough analysis, and we also then work and
[2:13:07] partner with Attendance Works to understand the work that's been done in the other
[2:13:11] states and the recommendations, and just really bring
[2:13:15] this issue to the forefront, not only for us as a board,
[2:13:19] but for our legislature.
[2:13:22] There are policy changes that I believe will be effective here,
[2:13:26] and also for our communities. It really
[2:13:29] bears us shining a spotlight on this throughout the
[2:13:33] state at the importance of this issue and what can be done to
[2:13:37] address it and ideally fix it.
[2:13:40] Okay. Any other comments? We kind of got off track-
[2:13:43] You're fine
[2:13:43] ... from your approval, but-
[2:13:44] I guess I would like to comment. So I just completed a white paper around chronic
[2:13:48] absenteeism. It's in draft format,
[2:13:51] and where we looked at some schools in the St.
[2:13:53] Louis area, but it forced us to also look at some of those organizations,
[2:13:58] Spark Well, Attendance Works, just to see what was happening, and
[2:14:02] you're absolutely correct. It is nationwide.
[2:14:04] And so we are hearing from
[2:14:07] students, we heard from district leaders.
[2:14:10] No matter if it was an affluent community or a not so
[2:14:14] affluent community, we saw some of the same trends.
[2:14:16] But I would love to, when you have your retreat, maybe we'll have time.
[2:14:19] Maybe our draft will be in final format. I can share that.
[2:14:23] And also, the SLU PRIME Center has current research around
[2:14:27] chronic absenteeism as well, and we can possibly get that to you so it could be a
[2:14:31] discussion point.
[2:14:32] Thank you.
[2:14:33] You're welcome.
[2:14:35] So on this slide, you will see
[2:14:39] renewal requirements. Like I said, the previous slides are
[2:14:43] really more informational than they are the requirements that the
[2:14:47] sponsor actually looks at when it comes to making these decisions.
[2:14:51] So this is what we review when the application comes to us,
[2:14:55] including the data that DESE provides to all public schools.
[2:14:59] So fiscal viability, academic record, and compliance.
[2:15:03] Now, where we saw an issue was the academic record, and this
[2:15:07] prompted us to, you'll see at the end when we come to our
[2:15:10] recommendation, make more of an adjustment to the recommendation,
[2:15:15] and talk to the sponsor about what this looks like moving forward.
[2:15:19] Because of course you can't change anything that has already been done, but what
[2:15:23] does this look like moving forward in the process that they see
[2:15:27] with Hope Leadership Academy?
[2:15:30] So part of that is looking at finance.
[2:15:32] Now you will see here that in the capital
[2:15:35] expenditures we see in school year '22 and '25,
[2:15:39] there wasn't
[2:15:41] anything there. And so,
[2:15:43] part of our talking to the sponsor, we talked about what could have happened there.
[2:15:47] And the school explains it could have been some equipment,
[2:15:50] technology, furniture, or other qualifying purchases were
[2:15:54] categorized under different expenditure codes.
[2:15:57] But fundraising efforts have been happening, and intentional investment have
[2:16:01] increased the per pupil expenditures.
[2:16:04] So you'll see that there as well.
[2:16:09] And of course, all schools need to have that 3% fund balance
[2:16:13] minimum, and as you can see, the school was above that for at
[2:16:17] least four out of the five years of this contract.
[2:16:21] Now this is where we get to the things that the sponsor looks at
[2:16:25] and meets with the school about. This is what is known as their
[2:16:29] annual report or annual review with the school.
[2:16:33] Every sponsor has one, but every sponsor does it a little
[2:16:37] differently. Now there are baseline things that they look at in these
[2:16:40] performance goals, including the things listed here.
[2:16:44] You will see Mets or Not Mets or Partially Mets.
[2:16:48] This is the way that we simplify some of the performance
[2:16:52] information that the sponsors provide for us, but each
[2:16:56] sponsor tweaks theirs a little bit differently.
[2:16:59] So we're going to talk about those Partially Mets and Not Met.
[2:17:02] And Shanika, you might go back for just a minute.
[2:17:05] Mm-hmm.
[2:17:05] So it is true, correct, that each of those
[2:17:08] categories, academics, financial management, down through
[2:17:11] operations, we see those evaluated by every sponsor-
[2:17:15] Every sponsor
[2:17:16] ... every time.
[2:17:16] Mm-hmm.
[2:17:16] Thank you.
[2:17:17] Correct. We see these things every time.
[2:17:20] Now,
[2:17:21] the way that they look at how they're going to
[2:17:25] monitor those things may be different with each sponsor.
[2:17:28] So it might not be as simplified as I'm making it here, but
[2:17:32] this is why we added the slide to talk a little bit more about the
[2:17:35] Partially Mets and Not Mets, so you can understand what the sponsor was looking
[2:17:39] at.
[2:17:46] So you can see that
[2:17:48] Hope Leadership Academy, again, didn't meet all of
[2:17:52] their academic
[2:17:54] performance goals. And so the
[2:17:58] sponsor has looked at this issue, has talked to the school
[2:18:02] about it, has made some changes when it comes to their performance
[2:18:05] contract and the measurements that they're going to look at, and also the
[2:18:08] consequences that will happen if they're not meeting their performance
[2:18:12] goals. So the sponsor's going to talk a lot more about that, a lot more
[2:18:16] than I can.
[2:18:21] Then we also look at the new performance contract.
[2:18:24] So how does this stack up to what was the
[2:18:28] current performance contract? And you will see the way SLU sets
[2:18:32] theirs up, they actually have three
[2:18:35] sections. So they have a standard, the measurements and evidence that they're going
[2:18:39] to look at for that standard, and then they also have what
[2:18:42] will happen if they do not make these
[2:18:45] outcomes. What do we plan on doing if the school
[2:18:49] themself do not make these outcomes?
[2:18:51] And again, the sponsor's going to talk a lot more about that.
[2:18:54] But these are some of the things that you will see in all sponsors' performance
[2:18:58] goals. When we talk about achievement goals, looking at MAP, you
[2:19:02] talk about growth, and you look at curriculum.
[2:19:05] A lot of sponsors look at these things.
[2:19:06] They just may look at them in a different way.
[2:19:15] So now here's our recommendation, and Lisa Sereno talked a little bit about
[2:19:21] this at the beginning. And this is where the
[2:19:24] department presents SLU's recommendation for the State
[2:19:28] Board of Education to authorize Hope Leadership Academy to
[2:19:32] continue operations pursuant to the charter's renewal
[2:19:36] granted by SLU.
[2:19:40] And what we would like to see is for SLU to come back
[2:19:44] and give us an updated report once they get the data from the
[2:19:47] '26, '27 school year, which we're currently in.
[2:19:52] Now, this is important because a lot of times we never get to see that fifth
[2:19:56] year of data in these contracts because the contracts end
[2:20:00] in June. So we look at only four years of data.
[2:20:04] But this, when SLU comes back, you will get to see that fifth year of data in that
[2:20:08] contract and how the school has performed.
[2:20:11] So they're going to come back and tell us all about that.
[2:20:14] Now, Alexandra
[2:20:18] Boyd and her team will take over from here to provide more
[2:20:22] specifics in the information that I gave, especially about the
[2:20:26] performance contracts and the reasons why they wanted to renew Hope
[2:20:30] Leadership Academy.
[2:20:36] Thank you, Shaneka and Lisa.
[2:20:41] While we were on break, you'll see we handed out some
[2:20:45] slides for you guys. Is it on here too?
[2:20:48] He's pausing it.
[2:20:50] Okay.
[2:20:50] Putting it up now.
[2:20:54] You should have a copy of our latest
[2:20:58] annual report for the Office of School and Community Partnerships.
[2:21:02] This highlights the work that we do in our charter authorizing
[2:21:06] office, and also with our schools.
[2:21:09] And then you also have printed out a slide deck,
[2:21:13] but it'll be on-screen too to follow along.
[2:21:15] And then there's also a letter of support in there from Black KC,
[2:21:20] which is a community-focused
[2:21:23] nonprofit in the Kansas City area.
[2:21:27] So those are the things you have.
[2:21:32] Before I get started, I just want to mention that our Dean,
[2:21:36] Gary Ritter, and then the Executive Director of SLU Prime,
[2:21:40] Colin Hitt, who usually attend these meetings with me, they
[2:21:45] send their regrets, but they are at a national convening to talk about
[2:21:49] growth measures. And so
[2:21:53] I got to get the Avengers on my team this time with Dr.
[2:21:56] Brown and Dr. Shaheed. So thank you guys for joining us.
[2:22:00] So I'll walk you through why SLU is renewing HLA, Hope Leadership
[2:22:04] Academy. It's a great question, and I'm looking forward to answering it.
[2:22:09] I want to talk to you a little bit first about the Office for School and Community
[2:22:13] Partnerships and our commitment and our strategic support for the
[2:22:16] schools in our portfolio.
[2:22:19] Talk about Hope's positive response to accountability so far,
[2:22:23] their growing community engagement and investments.
[2:22:27] Talk about the way they are exceeding growth expectations,
[2:22:31] and also talk about the relative opportunities for
[2:22:35] students if Hope Leadership Academy didn't exist, where they would likely
[2:22:39] attend, and then conclude with our high-stakes,
[2:22:43] high-priority contract goals. There are many of them.
[2:22:46] I pulled a few out for our discussion
[2:22:50] today.
[2:22:51] So first of all,
[2:22:54] our commitment is to build intentional
[2:22:58] partnerships that increase high-quality Pre-K 12 seats.
[2:23:02] We like to sponsor schools that are innovative and schools that
[2:23:06] serve students who are traditionally
[2:23:09] marginalized, and we would love if we could do both in one
[2:23:13] school.
[2:23:16] The strategic supports we offer are we work with
[2:23:19] our high-quality schools, we work with them on expansion and
[2:23:22] replication. As you all know, we were here a couple of months
[2:23:26] ago asking to expand Frontier into Columbia,
[2:23:31] and that's an example of a replication for us.
[2:23:35] Then we also work around either turnaround or closure.
[2:23:38] So if there's a school that's not quite as high quality as we would like it to be,
[2:23:42] we will work with that school to see if we need to move towards turnaround, if
[2:23:46] there are assets there, or if things are too far
[2:23:50] gone and we need to move to closure.
[2:23:53] We also support with professional development.
[2:23:56] Plugging right now on July 22nd through 24th, we're
[2:24:00] having a Summer Learning Institute at St.
[2:24:03] Louis University hosted by my office that's free to anybody
[2:24:07] who wants to come. So you guys are welcome to join us.
[2:24:11] We also host for our portfolio
[2:24:15] schools,
[2:24:16] a connection point called Roots and Reach. And Dr.
[2:24:19] Shaheed, would you tell us a little bit about Roots and Reach?
[2:24:22] Sure. It's a quarterly convening with our executive directors and school
[2:24:26] leaders so that we can meet around sharing best
[2:24:29] practices as it relates to MSIP 6. So our last meeting was
[2:24:33] around board governance, and what it looks like is almost like a
[2:24:38] fireside chat where our executive directors are talking about their school.
[2:24:42] So whether it's the executive director of Frontier or Academy Lafayette,
[2:24:46] where Hope and our other schools in our portfolio can ask those intimate questions
[2:24:50] and really learn side by side. And so we believe
[2:24:53] excellence is about sharing and collaboration.
[2:24:56] So that's the purpose of the Roots and Reach convening.
[2:24:59] Thank you, Dr. Shaheed. And we're looking into expanding that down
[2:25:03] to the middle management roles as well.
[2:25:05] So past the executive directors to the instructional coaches, the
[2:25:09] special ed directors, things of that nature.
[2:25:12] Then we also have the GAINS cohort, which is running
[2:25:16] in collaboration with SLU Prime and School Smart Kansas City
[2:25:20] and the Community Foundation in St. Louis.
[2:25:24] What we're doing there is we have found schools that are extremely
[2:25:27] high growth, and most of them with high direct certification numbers or high
[2:25:31] free and reduced lunch numbers to figure out what it is that they're doing
[2:25:35] to get that high growth and see if it's something that can be replicated in other
[2:25:39] parts of the state.
[2:25:42] And then, of course, our charter portfolio schools will be
[2:25:46] one of the first audiences for that report when it comes out.
[2:25:50] And then Dr. Brown, could you talk about our support for
[2:25:54] teacher certification?
[2:25:55] Absolutely.
[2:25:57] So one of the things at SLU that we believe strongly in is
[2:26:01] supporting diverse teacher
[2:26:04] certification pathways.
[2:26:06] You may have heard that we recently expanded to an online program
[2:26:10] that supports both St. Louis and Kansas City and the entire state,
[2:26:14] with a two-year program that allows paraprofessionals in schools
[2:26:18] to be certified to move towards a full bachelor's degree
[2:26:22] to become certified to teach in schools that they're already currently
[2:26:26] working in. And we continue to look at ways
[2:26:30] to support not just creating great teachers,
[2:26:34] and leaders in our schools, but supporting the community
[2:26:38] itself, through Dr. Boyd's office, and the
[2:26:42] work that we do across the state
[2:26:45] We also offer various educational leader trainings and
[2:26:48] credentials, from principalship all the way up to
[2:26:51] superintendents.
[2:26:53] And last, it's been mentioned several times, our Prime Center Policy Research
[2:26:57] Center in Missouri Education. I was very happy to hear the question
[2:27:00] about attendance, because our Prime Center has been doing some work-
[2:27:04] Mm
[2:27:04] ... and continues to do some work on really getting into the data of what's
[2:27:08] causing this, because it's something that is plaguing not only our state,
[2:27:12] but our nation. And so, it's great for us to be able to
[2:27:16] rely on high quality research coming out of the
[2:27:20] Prime Center, not only to inform our decisions when it comes
[2:27:23] to charter authorization, but also some of the wider questions
[2:27:27] that we have existing in education.
[2:27:31] The last thing I'll say is in teacher certification, it really excites me as
[2:27:35] someone who works in teacher ed to be able to partner directly with
[2:27:38] schools so that some of our new teachers coming out of colleges of
[2:27:42] education can be a part of the various schools that we support,
[2:27:46] whether that be traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools,
[2:27:50] things like that, so that they can see the rich diversity in what exists in
[2:27:54] education in Missouri. And this is one way that we can help,
[2:27:58] as an institution, feed great teachers into classrooms like at Hope
[2:28:02] Leadership Academy. We truly believe that that's a pathway
[2:28:06] that exists, and that we hope to be able to capitalize on.
[2:28:09] And thank you so much. And I just wanted you to know all of the
[2:28:13] things that we do to support our schools as we walk through this data and talk
[2:28:16] about Hope Leadership Academy in particular.
[2:28:19] You'll see when they joined our portfolio, we worked to support leadership at
[2:28:24] Hope to improve on logistics and
[2:28:27] structure, and operational practices.
[2:28:30] So they quickly changed from partially met to met on several standards.
[2:28:34] I also want to note that over the general trajectory,
[2:28:38] academic achievement has improved.
[2:28:41] Not as quickly as we would like, but it is heading in the right
[2:28:44] direction. So even though it says partially met across, just know that's partially
[2:28:48] met with some improvements happening in those sections.
[2:28:52] I want to highlight here that Hope Leadership Academy has done a great job in
[2:28:56] working with the community and working to provide a school that the
[2:28:59] community wants.
[2:29:01] Most recently, they've received half a million dollar funding for
[2:29:05] expansion, to have a larger building, enroll more students,
[2:29:10] and better support those students.
[2:29:12] From that investment, they'll be able to add an additional instructional coach
[2:29:16] in math. They had an instructional coach last year that really focused
[2:29:20] on ELA, and so now they'll add an instructional coach on math
[2:29:24] with those added funds.
[2:29:28] And then want to talk to you about Hope exceeding growth
[2:29:31] expectations. So here you can see Missouri's
[2:29:35] distribution of growth scores
[2:29:39] across the state. The average using the prime growth score is an
[2:29:43] 85. You'll see in ELA, Hope Leadership Academy got
[2:29:47] a 94.2. That means that they're
[2:29:50] performing in growth better than about
[2:29:54] 96% of other elementary students.
[2:29:56] So there are about 1,000 schools in that group, and they're
[2:30:00] 38th out of 1,000 in terms of ELA growth.
[2:30:03] For math, they're 220 out of 1,000 for ELA
[2:30:07] growth, which means they're doing
[2:30:09] better than about 78% of other elementary schools in math.
[2:30:13] And what that essentially means is that they're doing a really good job of
[2:30:16] helping to catch up students,
[2:30:19] taking them where they are, and growing them more than what is expected over the
[2:30:22] year.
[2:30:25] Here you can see about the proficiency.
[2:30:28] We're going to talk about that too, and then the other schools that are in the
[2:30:31] neighborhood,
[2:30:33] where HLA is. So you'll see
[2:30:37] I have HLA is at the top because it has a
[2:30:41] 94 in the ELA growth score. The proficiency
[2:30:45] rate is only 11%, but I want to tell you why we're focusing on
[2:30:49] the growth score, because what you don't see in the proficiency number is
[2:30:53] that there were several students that covered upwards of
[2:30:57] 60, 80-point scale scores, and came within
[2:31:00] 10 points or fewer of becoming proficient.
[2:31:04] So that's not going to show up in that 11%, but that's what's showing up in that
[2:31:08] growth. So there were students who made incredible growth
[2:31:11] gains in ELA over this past year.
[2:31:15] They're outperforming at least one neighborhood school in straight proficiency, and
[2:31:18] they're outperforming all the neighborhood schools in growth, as well
[2:31:22] as
[2:31:24] the Kansas City public schools, and the state average
[2:31:28] is 85.
[2:31:30] Here's for math. Math is not as nice of a story, but they still have
[2:31:34] the highest growth score for the schools in their neighborhood.
[2:31:39] And as I said, with the investment from Black
[2:31:43] KC, they'll be able to hire a math interventionist.
[2:31:46] And so we hope to see that growth sustained, and as a
[2:31:50] result, an improvement in proficiency.
[2:31:55] Here are the high stakes contract goals,
[2:31:58] for examples for you. So just so you know, we're really focused
[2:32:02] on pushing students out of basic and below basic into
[2:32:06] proficiency. So because of that, one of the high stakes contract goals
[2:32:10] that we have
[2:32:11] says that all students who previously scored a basic or below basic,
[2:32:15] the average of those students will score
[2:32:19] higher than expected on their growth score.
[2:32:21] And if
[2:32:23] that doesn't happen, then we'll send a letter of concern out to the school and
[2:32:27] work with them to build
[2:32:30] a plan for improvement. If
[2:32:34] the
[2:32:35] plan is deemed insufficient, then we will put them on probation, and
[2:32:39] then we will tell them exactly what we think they should do and carry out at the
[2:32:43] school.
[2:32:44] And so that's for ELA and for math. And just one other note, that if the
[2:32:48] school meets fewer than half of its academic achievement standards in any year,
[2:32:52] it will pause new student enrollment for the upcoming school year.
[2:32:56] So we're focused on supporting Hope so that they can be
[2:33:01] ... stronger for the students and the community.
[2:33:04] And if they don't do that, we will move towards closure.
[2:33:08] And
[2:33:09] I just want to note that renewal is not a stamp of approval for
[2:33:13] status quo. It's something that we want to do to continue to support
[2:33:17] improvement. And we believe if HOPE Leadership Academy did not exist,
[2:33:21] students would be going to schools where proficiency is
[2:33:25] around the same, but growth is a little bit lower, where they wouldn't necessarily
[2:33:29] be pushed past proficiency staying with the program.
[2:33:35] Then also, I'd just like to highlight in our
[2:33:38] annual report, if you look on page 17, you
[2:33:42] can see the image of the growth scores for our entire
[2:33:46] portfolio.
[2:33:48] And you can see that Hope Leadership Academy has the single
[2:33:51] highest growth score for the entire portfolio, and that's a
[2:33:55] 94.2 in ELA. That's higher than
[2:33:59] Frontier's math growth score, which is the highest in the state.
[2:34:03] So I'd just like to note that we're doing good work, and we're pushing for better.
[2:34:07] I'm happy to entertain any questions you have.
[2:34:12] Mrs. Casey.
[2:34:13] Thank you, President Miller.
[2:34:15] And thank you for this additional information.
[2:34:17] It's helpful, and I think it will...
[2:34:21] We still have work to do in this area, but this is a good start
[2:34:25] of being able to provide more specific details
[2:34:29] about the plans for improvement at a specific
[2:34:33] charter school or any school.
[2:34:35] A couple of various questions. If I look back at your
[2:34:39] slide on how Hope Leadership Academy is building for the future,
[2:34:44] you
[2:34:45] indicate new curriculums.
[2:34:50] My first question is, have those curriculums been vetted to ensure that they're
[2:34:54] deemed high-quality instruction materials, and are they on the
[2:34:57] approved state curriculum list?
[2:35:01] Yes, ma'am. That's where the
[2:35:04] curriculum was sourced from the state-approved list.
[2:35:06] They looked at what was on the list and then found what best fit
[2:35:10] the student body. They're using the McGraw Hill text to
[2:35:14] support their curriculum.
[2:35:17] Thank you.
[2:35:18] I don't see any mention of assessment tools that are being
[2:35:22] used in this particular-
[2:35:24] Mm-hmm
[2:35:25] ... update. So, the same question, are the
[2:35:28] assessment tools being used
[2:35:32] on the list of approved assessment tools?
[2:35:36] Yes. They're using i-Ready.
[2:35:38] Okay. And then how regularly will you
[2:35:42] as a sponsor review those assessment results?
[2:35:45] So, as a sponsor, we attend every single board
[2:35:49] meeting of our charter schools, and so we require that
[2:35:52] those details are reviewed at the board meeting.
[2:35:56] And so we will see them either before, perhaps at an
[2:36:00] academic meeting or in the board meeting where they're reviewed,
[2:36:04] and so within a couple of weeks of the
[2:36:07] results.
[2:36:09] So, and my last question in this area, and turn it
[2:36:13] over, the contract goals.
[2:36:16] Yes.
[2:36:17] There's nothing specific here. There's no specific
[2:36:21] targeted goal that they will grow by X, or an actual...
[2:36:25] There's descriptive-
[2:36:27] Mm-hmm
[2:36:27] ... but there is not a specific measurement-
[2:36:30] Mm-hmm
[2:36:30] ... defined. So what are the targets for growth?
[2:36:33] How much are you expecting
[2:36:36] HLA to grow, and by what cohort and
[2:36:40] what timeframe?
[2:36:41] Yeah. So, we expect HLA to exceed growth
[2:36:45] expectations from now until they
[2:36:49] are on par with the district and the state.
[2:36:52] But exceed could be 1% or 5% or
[2:36:56] 20%. There should be a specific goal.
[2:37:02] I'll turn it over.
[2:37:03] Mm-hmm.
[2:37:05] Mrs. Westbrooks-Hodges.
[2:37:06] Thank you, Mr. President. I think what
[2:37:10] Carrie is getting at, and what I'm thinking is, at what point does growth
[2:37:14] show up in the status column?
[2:37:16] Yeah. No, I appreciate that question.
[2:37:18] Right. And so
[2:37:20] first of all, I'm a big fan of SLU and the Prime Center and the
[2:37:24] work that you're doing, and I really deeply appreciate the
[2:37:28] focus on growth and growing our children.
[2:37:31] Thank you.
[2:37:32] When can we expect to see... So what are your projections-
[2:37:35] Yeah
[2:37:35] ... and when do we move from growth to-
[2:37:38] Mm-hmm
[2:37:38] ... an expectation of a particular status at a particular
[2:37:43] time?
[2:37:44] Yeah.
[2:37:44] So what's your-
[2:37:45] I appreciate-
[2:37:45] ... two years? Is it three years? When are we going to get there?
[2:37:47] Yeah. I appreciate the rephrase of the question.
[2:37:51] So
[2:37:52] in my experience in working with schools that are doing turnaround work here in
[2:37:56] Missouri,
[2:37:57] when students are with a program for three consecutive
[2:38:01] years, we should expect to see an increase in proficiency for the
[2:38:05] students that have stayed with the program for three consecutive years.
[2:38:09] If we get above expected growth for three consecutive years,
[2:38:13] that usually results in a movement from one bucket to the
[2:38:17] next, from below basic to basic, or basic to proficient.
[2:38:19] Hold on to that. So the next question is, we see the
[2:38:23] attendance challenges. Talk about mobility
[2:38:28] and how often these
[2:38:30] cohorts are turning over, and if we
[2:38:34] expect that we can achieve the
[2:38:37] persistency and the
[2:38:40] progression-
[2:38:41] Mm-hmm
[2:38:41] ... of the same cohort of students.
[2:38:43] Yeah, no.
[2:38:43] Is that a challenge?
[2:38:44] That is definitely a challenge, and that's one of the reasons that it's so
[2:38:48] exciting to work in the School of Education that authorizes schools
[2:38:52] because we're working to support individual schools, but
[2:38:56] we're also working to support the overall sector.
[2:38:59] So the things that we learn from other schools, we'll try to implement at Hope,
[2:39:03] and hopefully positively impacts public education.
[2:39:07] Are you seeing an impact
[2:39:13] Do you have that long tail data to say you're impacting mobility?
[2:39:19] Not on this first run of our white paper, but there are some
[2:39:23] districts that are. But I can say-
[2:39:25] That's the ultimate goal, right?
[2:39:26] Yeah.
[2:39:26] To-
[2:39:27] Yeah.
[2:39:28] And the goal is, like Dr. Boyd said, to replicate what is working in
[2:39:32] certain districts.
[2:39:34] What we found, and I think someone asked the question about parents and vacations,
[2:39:38] there is a conversation that we're not having about a population
[2:39:42] of students who have the means to take
[2:39:46] a vacation in midweek, right before the holiday break, and so
[2:39:50] those three days add up. So we've not built partnerships with the business
[2:39:54] community to say, "Hey, can you work with us as a school district?" And I'm kind of
[2:39:58] talking too much, because this is research that we have not delved into, but would
[2:40:02] like to spend more time talking to the business community, and people like Dr.
[2:40:05] Boyd. Not to point her out, she admitted herself how her son misses several days
[2:40:09] of school because of his illness. But we have those educated
[2:40:13] professionals, and they have the means and the resources, and they can
[2:40:17] stay with nanny or grandmother. That's impacting the attendance rate.
[2:40:20] But that's not included in when we're talking about chronic
[2:40:23] absenteeism. That conversation is not normally had.
[2:40:26] It is so much work to be done, and we won't just scratch the
[2:40:30] surface with one organization, one set of data,
[2:40:34] one research paper, of course.
[2:40:38] But we are having the conversation with some of the schools.
[2:40:43] So we have Maplewood Richmond Heights alongside Confluence Academy.
[2:40:47] Look totally different in terms of their attendance data, but could we
[2:40:50] share some of those conversations and dialogue and best practice?
[2:40:54] We're not there yet, but that's the goal.
[2:40:57] Mr. Otto.
[2:40:59] Yeah. This is
[2:41:01] kind of going back to the high-priority contract goals.
[2:41:04] And so, I see that the measurement you just described
[2:41:07] was growth year over year.
[2:41:11] And you did mention that
[2:41:13] if they don't meet those standards, you'll pause new student enrollment, and then
[2:41:17] eventually
[2:41:18] close the school. So how long, what's the runway there
[2:41:23] if they are not
[2:41:25] meeting their... Because the numbers, I
[2:41:28] hate to shine a spotlight on it, and I don't know what the causes were, but
[2:41:32] 92, 93%
[2:41:36] below basic is not really good, right?
[2:41:38] And so,
[2:41:39] to focus on those prime numbers, yeah, they grew
[2:41:43] from 93 to 73, but that's going to
[2:41:47] plateau at some point, I think. Or maybe it isn't. I don't know.
[2:41:50] Maybe they're
[2:41:52] really improving the students. But it's kind of easy to go from
[2:41:56] really bad to okay,
[2:41:58] and then to keep moving forward from okay to
[2:42:01] good and great and everything like that.
[2:42:02] But
[2:42:04] really my question is, what's the timeline?
[2:42:06] How long are you going to give them
[2:42:09] to keep showing improvement?
[2:42:11] Yeah. And I just want to say that
[2:42:14] the growth measure that Missouri has is a really strong, robust measure.
[2:42:18] And so it's not necessarily... Typically, you would think it's easier to grow
[2:42:22] if you're a lower proficiency than if you're a higher proficiency.
[2:42:25] That's not necessarily the case. So I just want to state that.
[2:42:28] But in terms of your question for the timeline,
[2:42:32] we're going to review the results of
[2:42:35] this most recent iteration of testing to see if
[2:42:39] they produced the same amount of growth and improved proficiency.
[2:42:43] So once we receive that information, I'm hoping by December,
[2:42:47] we'll be able to make that decision about whether or not we need to move into the
[2:42:50] letter of concern for an improvement plan or not.
[2:42:53] If we do have to move into a letter of concern and improvement plan
[2:42:57] basis, if we're on the same page and we are
[2:43:01] agreeable to the plan in place, and the plan is
[2:43:04] executed well, then we should be fine.
[2:43:07] If not, the school will be closed within the following 18 months.
[2:43:11] Okay. Thank you.
[2:43:14] Mm-hmm.
[2:43:15] So the recommendation is the sponsor, SLU, recommends
[2:43:19] a five-year renewal. Oh, I'm sorry.
[2:43:22] No.
[2:43:22] Yes.
[2:43:24] Oh.
[2:43:25] Go ahead. Go ahead and finish.
[2:43:26] Okay.
[2:43:26] And then I'll come back.
[2:43:28] This recommendation is based on the sponsor's analysis of the comprehensive
[2:43:32] body of objective evidence. The department presents SLU's
[2:43:36] recommendation that the State Board of Education authorize Hope Leadership
[2:43:39] Academy to continue operations pursuant to the charter renewal
[2:43:43] granted by SLU effective July 1st
[2:43:48] of 2026 for a five-year period. Per the
[2:43:51] contingencies outlined in the performance contract and the sponsor's
[2:43:55] additional review of academics,
[2:43:58] an update to the State Board of Education following the
[2:44:02] '26-'27 school year.
[2:44:06] Do we have a motion for that?
[2:44:10] Motion.
[2:44:11] Second.
[2:44:11] And a second. We have a motion and a second, so now we'll discuss it.
[2:44:16] Mrs. Casey.
[2:44:17] Thank you very much.
[2:44:18] Do we, as a board, have an option to recommend less than a five-year
[2:44:22] renewal?
[2:44:23] Unfortunately, statute does not
[2:44:26] have anything for that. We don't have a up to in
[2:44:30] statute, so it's either five or 10 or
[2:44:34] nothing.
[2:44:35] Okay. Thank you for confirming.
[2:44:38] I don't know the most appropriate way to address this point.
[2:44:42] It was stated earlier that you will require the
[2:44:47] sponsor to come back with an update-
[2:44:50] Yes
[2:44:50] ... at year one. I would like to further amend the
[2:44:54] motion to include that point, that the sponsor will
[2:44:58] come back
[2:44:59] each, and I would like to
[2:45:02] go beyond your recommendation that it be
[2:45:05] just in this next year, but that they come back annually
[2:45:09] during this five-year period until they meet their
[2:45:13] goals.
[2:45:17] Yeah, there needs to be a second.
[2:45:18] Oh, I'll second the amendment to the motion.
[2:45:21] Okay. So we have an amendment to the motion, and it has been
[2:45:25] seconded.
[2:45:26] So any discussion on the amendment?
[2:45:30] Mr. Matusik?
[2:45:32] No real discussion, just a question.
[2:45:35] Brad, do you have that, what you need? Okay.
[2:45:38] Okay, any other questions?
[2:45:41] Sorry, just a point of clarification.
[2:45:44] I know Board Member Westbrook Hodge asked at the beginning,
[2:45:48] what if we vote no, basically. Really paraphrasing,
[2:45:52] but
[2:45:53] I took a look at the statute, and I want somebody to correct me, but it looks like
[2:45:57] if the
[2:46:00] school meets the requirements, then we have to
[2:46:03] approve. There's no
[2:46:06] no. But at least from what I can tell,
[2:46:09] under 160.403,
[2:46:13] the only real authority that the state school board
[2:46:17] has would be to deny a sponsor who
[2:46:21] sponsors charter schools who we may or may not approve of. Is that correct?
[2:46:25] Absolutely. So you'll
[2:46:29] see, like this new board, some people who haven't been here
[2:46:33] for long enough will see the evaluation of sponsors come forth.
[2:46:37] That's every three years or as caused.
[2:46:40] So if the department says, "Hey, board, we think we
[2:46:44] need to evaluate this sponsor prior two to three years," or the board comes back
[2:46:48] and says, "We want to evaluate this sponsor based on
[2:46:52] whatever."
[2:46:53] Yeah, so I just wanted to clarify that.
[2:46:54] So I think it's appropriate that we included this modification
[2:46:58] that the sponsor come back to us about this particular school, and then we
[2:47:02] can take that into account when we are
[2:47:06] evaluating the renewal of the sponsor. Does that make sense?
[2:47:09] Yes.
[2:47:10] Okay. Mrs. Westbrook.
[2:47:12] And this isn't an amendment to the motion, it's just discussion
[2:47:16] about
[2:47:17] what would be helpful when you come back.
[2:47:20] It would be great if you were to, based on your growth
[2:47:24] projections model, when you expect
[2:47:27] them to get to that status point that we like
[2:47:31] to see. Is it going to take 10 years, three years?
[2:47:35] That's helpful context, and it also holds
[2:47:39] you guys accountable for meeting those projections
[2:47:43] and those growth targets,
[2:47:45] because growth is great, but it needs to get you somewhere.
[2:47:49] Well, the only way to get somewhere is to grow.
[2:47:52] It is. And so, I think that's
[2:47:55] a happy balancing act, right?
[2:47:59] To
[2:48:00] push for growth,
[2:48:02] and to project those targets, and then help us
[2:48:06] understand those
[2:48:08] status levels that you're attempting to achieve.
[2:48:11] Yeah. I'm very excited to do that. That's part of the work that's going
[2:48:15] on with the GAINS cohort right now, where we have a tool that we're working with
[2:48:19] to model just that. So it would be my pleasure.
[2:48:23] Okay.
[2:48:24] I think something else, just
[2:48:26] to remind the sponsors and the board and our schools, that with the
[2:48:30] grade cards that the governor, the executive order, has called for us to do, we'll
[2:48:34] have an additional,
[2:48:36] fairly clear moniker on each of our
[2:48:40] public schools, including public charter schools and districts
[2:48:44] moving forward.
[2:48:45] So we do have the amendment, and it's been moved, and it's been
[2:48:49] seconded. So can we move for a vote on the
[2:48:52] amendment to the motion?
[2:48:56] So is there any more questions about the amendment?
[2:49:00] Hearing none, all those in favor of the amendment as presented, which is to have
[2:49:04] them come back annually and present.
[2:49:07] Okay.
[2:49:09] All those in favor say aye.
[2:49:10] Aye.
[2:49:10] Aye.
[2:49:11] Aye.
[2:49:11] Any opposition?
[2:49:13] Hearing none, that passes. Now we'll go to the motion.
[2:49:17] And so,
[2:49:20] is there any questions about the motion with the amendment?
[2:49:23] Well, any additions to it?
[2:49:25] I think we just approved the motion as amended, so we're good on that.
[2:49:29] No, we didn't vote on the motion.
[2:49:31] Which was to-
[2:49:32] Did we?
[2:49:33] No.
[2:49:33] I don't-
[2:49:34] I think we stopped.
[2:49:35] You vote to amend that, then you vote the motion.
[2:49:38] So you're saying we included the motion in the
[2:49:42] amendment when we voted on the amendment?
[2:49:44] I think for
[2:49:45] clarification, to restate,
[2:49:48] and for
[2:49:51] clarity, and that we will revote, but the motion
[2:49:55] on the floor is to approve the renewal
[2:50:00] of Hope Leadership Academy for five years
[2:50:03] and require the sponsor to present to the
[2:50:07] board,
[2:50:08] each year, annually during that renewal period, the
[2:50:12] progress made toward the specific goals
[2:50:15] set within their
[2:50:18] contract with the school. And
[2:50:22] that
[2:50:23] include a long-range projection.
[2:50:26] And that is the motion on the floor.
[2:50:28] And it's been seconded by Mr. Otto.
[2:50:33] And the vote-
[2:50:34] Mm-hmm
[2:50:35] ... is according to that motion. Yeah.
[2:50:39] So we've all voted on that motion.
[2:50:41] Yes.
[2:50:42] And that was the motion.
[2:50:43] Okay.
[2:50:44] Thank you for your service. I appreciate you.
[2:50:46] Thank you.
[2:50:47] Thank you.
[2:50:48] Thank you.
[2:50:50] Thank
[2:50:54] you.
[2:50:58] So are you--
[2:51:00] I don't believe that's correct. I think you have to vote on the
[2:51:04] renewed motion.
[2:51:08] Yeah, we put it on the-
[2:51:09] Mm-hmm.
[2:51:11] And that goes down to the motion.
[2:51:14] Yeah.
[2:51:14] And to correct them-
[2:51:15] Yes
[2:51:16] ... change motion on the floor, then you vote on it.
[2:51:18] Correct.
[2:51:19] You're correct.
[2:51:19] Okay.
[2:51:20] Yeah.
[2:51:25] Yeah.
[2:51:25] So,
[2:51:27] yeah, just call for a vote.
[2:51:28] Yeah.
[2:51:29] So, we're going to call for a vote-
[2:51:31] Sure
[2:51:32] ... with the amendment that we've already approved for
[2:51:36] the motion with the amendment-
[2:51:38] Yeah
[2:51:38] ... and current basis.
[2:51:40] Yeah.
[2:51:41] Yeah. Okay?
[2:51:42] And now let me just get a second to that, or a first, I
[2:51:46] guess, because it would be a different motion.
[2:51:49] Yeah.
[2:51:51] Yeah.
[2:51:51] To accept the original motion as amended.
[2:51:52] As amended. Yeah, that'd be correct.
[2:51:55] Move to accept the original motion as amended.
[2:51:57] Second.
[2:51:58] Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in agreement say aye.
[2:52:02] Aye.
[2:52:02] Aye.
[2:52:03] Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thank you.
[2:52:07] Thank you for that clarity, Kyle, or Dr. Kruse.
[2:52:16] Okay. Now,
[2:52:19] we will proceed to the second of the charter
[2:52:22] renewals that we have for your consideration
[2:52:27] today. This one is for
[2:52:30] Citizens of the World Kansas City Charter School.
[2:52:34] Its sponsor is Kansas City Public Schools, and with us
[2:52:38] today we have
[2:52:40] the Director of Education Collaboration, Allison Heil,
[2:52:44] and the Deputy Superintendent, Daryl Davis,
[2:52:48] from Kansas City Public Schools.
[2:52:51] I'm going to turn this over to Shaneka.
[2:52:54] We'll have a similar flow of the discussion.
[2:52:58] The concern on this particular
[2:53:01] renewal is not the
[2:53:06] really serious concern and
[2:53:09] what really stood out about our previous
[2:53:13] school, which was those low proficiency rates.
[2:53:17] This is more about
[2:53:21] Kansas City Public Schools taking over as sponsor of
[2:53:24] Citizens of the World, and just looking at the
[2:53:28] history of the previous sponsor's
[2:53:31] evaluation of Citizens of the World and how
[2:53:35] KCPS
[2:53:37] looked at those evaluations and made its renewal decision.
[2:53:42] Okay. Shaneka?
[2:53:43] All right. So again, we have Citizens of the
[2:53:47] World, and this is what you saw last time, so we're not
[2:53:51] going to go through it. We talked about the authority
[2:53:54] and the process which the department takes when looking
[2:53:58] at renewal applications. Now, Citizens
[2:54:02] of the World, again, as stated, was previously
[2:54:06] sponsored by Missouri Charter Public School Commission.
[2:54:09] Now, this renewal is
[2:54:12] a transfer of sponsor, as
[2:54:15] in May with Allen Village. So if you
[2:54:19] remember, there was an application for a renewal in May
[2:54:23] with Allen Village, who transferred sponsorship to the Missouri Charter
[2:54:27] Public School Commission. Citizens has made the decision to move
[2:54:31] forward with their next five years to
[2:54:34] Kansas City Public Schools as their sponsor.
[2:54:37] This renewal will highlight the data Citizens' last four
[2:54:41] years, as in the last renewal presentation.
[2:54:46] The biggest difference, again, is going to be the performance contract
[2:54:50] that will move into the next five years that is
[2:54:54] being established by the Kansas City Public
[2:54:57] Schools. What you will see in this renewal is the
[2:55:01] current performance contract, their performance goals, and where they
[2:55:05] stand or stood with Missouri Charter Public School
[2:55:08] Commission. Does that make sense?
[2:55:12] It is a lot going on, but understand that
[2:55:15] you're looking at the renewal with the commission
[2:55:19] and what the commission
[2:55:22] looked at when it was doing its annual review of this school.
[2:55:26] And then at the end, you will see the performance contract and goals
[2:55:31] that have been set forward for the next five years with Kansas City Public.
[2:55:34] Yes.
[2:55:35] Thank you for that clarification.
[2:55:36] At this point, could you explain why this transfer is taking place
[2:55:41] and why the sponsors are changing?
[2:55:42] And I will let
[2:55:44] Allison talk. She was going to talk a lot more about that
[2:55:48] at the end of the presentation, but can you speak a little bit about that now?
[2:55:52] Sure.
[2:55:54] Either one?
[2:55:54] Yes.
[2:55:55] Okay.
[2:55:56] So earlier in the year, the school decided
[2:56:00] to
[2:56:03] cut ties with their national charter organization and become a local
[2:56:07] independent
[2:56:09] public charter school. And so,
[2:56:13] after doing that, they decided that they were going to
[2:56:16] pursue
[2:56:18] emerging
[2:56:20] collaboration with another charter school that is in our system,
[2:56:24] that's part of our portfolio. And so aligning with a common
[2:56:28] sponsor
[2:56:30] seemed to make sense. It would allow them to create some
[2:56:33] operational efficiencies and to strengthen their academic
[2:56:38] initiatives together under a common sponsor.
[2:56:40] So that was
[2:56:42] a lot of the decision.
[2:56:43] And why are they leaving their national
[2:56:47] organization?
[2:56:48] Management.
[2:56:50] The management company.
[2:56:50] The national management organization.
[2:56:53] They had spent 10 years with that organization.
[2:56:56] They felt like they had grown. They were going
[2:57:00] to
[2:57:02] continue to grow, and I think economically or
[2:57:06] financially, it was a good move for them to do so.
[2:57:09] They were going to be able to keep 5% of their local aid,
[2:57:14] and bring it back into their organization. So it made sense for them.
[2:57:18] And we have history in Missouri of charter
[2:57:22] schools starting out with their management company, helping them with the back
[2:57:26] office things that they need as they open up and grow, and then
[2:57:29] moving from those management companies to just stand on their own.
[2:57:33] So this has happened in previous times as well.
[2:57:39] So again, just like in the last presentation, you will see this information
[2:57:43] is informational. It's not necessarily what the sponsor is looking at when it
[2:57:47] comes to a renewal decision. So, we have
[2:57:51] information here on their enrollment,
[2:57:56] their demographics, and you'll see it next to the
[2:58:00] local district as well as the state.
[2:58:04] Their 90/90, which we talked about with the last
[2:58:09] presentation. And
[2:58:12] we will have more conversation when the sponsor gives
[2:58:15] you
[2:58:17] their reasoning, their process, all those things that go into their
[2:58:21] goals.
[2:58:23] And also, you have here the assessment or performance
[2:58:27] information for ELA. You'll see
[2:58:31] Citizens compared to the local district, compared to the state.
[2:58:35] Again, that's more informational because in statute it doesn't say
[2:58:39] that the school will be compared to the state, but the school is compared to the
[2:58:42] local district.
[2:58:45] Then we have math.
[2:58:48] And then we move on to what the renewal requirements are,
[2:58:52] which we talk about fiscal, we talk about academic, and we talk about
[2:58:55] compliance. When looking at this renewal application, we really didn't see
[2:58:59] any issues with any of these
[2:59:04] considerations. The only thing is, is that they are moving to
[2:59:08] another sponsor, and what their
[2:59:11] current sponsor looked at and how that sponsor evaluated
[2:59:15] them.
[2:59:21] And here we have more information about finance.
[2:59:24] Now, prior to 2025, the school leased its
[2:59:28] facility through IFF. In the spring of 2025, the
[2:59:31] school purchased the building, so you'll see some significant jumps
[2:59:35] in
[2:59:38] their finances here.
[2:59:42] Again, we're looking at the fund balance, and the school has remained well above
[2:59:45] the 3% fund balance required by public schools.
[2:59:50] Now, this is what I was talking about at the beginning.
[2:59:53] This is the performance contract with the commission, the Missouri Charter Public
[2:59:56] School Commission, and this is their analysis of the
[3:00:00] performance goals
[3:00:02] with Citizens. So you'll see how they have
[3:00:06] partially mets and mets in a lot of these
[3:00:09] categories. Now, last time we talked about all
[3:00:14] sponsors
[3:00:15] have categories in academics, finance, learning,
[3:00:19] governance, and operations.
[3:00:22] Now, under that, they may have
[3:00:25] five or six different goals that the
[3:00:29] school needs to meet that will get you to that partial.
[3:00:33] So not necessarily just as simplified as I have it
[3:00:37] here, but more robust and a lot more things to
[3:00:41] tick off when it comes to whether they met it or not.
[3:00:44] And so we explain that here, those partially mets and what that
[3:00:48] looks like. And we talk to the new sponsor about
[3:00:52] what they're going to do to make sure that the school is meeting
[3:00:56] these goals, and especially when it comes to their financial
[3:01:00] goals and having that money on hand that they need.
[3:01:03] So we had a conversation with the new sponsor to talk about what is that going
[3:01:07] to look like moving forward, and what is that going to look like in your
[3:01:10] performance goals. So, KCPS will talk more
[3:01:14] about that once we finish our presentation.
[3:01:20] And here are some of those goals that KCPS is putting
[3:01:24] forth for Citizens. So you will see they have standards, and they
[3:01:28] have their measures/evidence. Now, this is not
[3:01:32] nearly all the things that KCPS is putting in their performance
[3:01:36] contract, but this is just a simplified example of some of
[3:01:40] the things that they're putting into their contract when it comes to Citizens and
[3:01:44] what they expect to see.
[3:01:48] So we're having the same recommendation here.
[3:01:51] And again, this is not necessarily for academics, but the fact that they are
[3:01:54] transferring to a new sponsor, so we can see what
[3:01:58] that's going to look like moving forward.
[3:02:01] So the recommendation is the same.
[3:02:03] The sponsor, KCPS, recommends a five-year renewal.
[3:02:07] This recommendation is based on the sponsor's analysis of the
[3:02:10] comprehensive body of objective evidence.
[3:02:13] The department presents KCPS's recommendation that
[3:02:17] the State Board of Education authorize Citizens of the World, Kansas
[3:02:21] City to continue operations pursuant to the charter renewal
[3:02:25] granted by KCPS effective July 1st,
[3:02:29] 2026. And at the end of that, we are asking them to come
[3:02:33] back with next year's data to give us a report on where they
[3:02:37] see the school and how they see the school
[3:02:40] performing moving forward.
[3:02:44] And now I would like to turn it over to KCPS to give
[3:02:48] you more information on their process as they looked
[3:02:52] at this school and made the decision to take on this
[3:02:56] new charter. So,
[3:02:58] we'll-
[3:02:58] Maybe before you start, I'll just,
[3:03:02] a little bit more context.
[3:03:04] Our level of concern around the
[3:03:08] partially mets and the performance data that we see for this
[3:03:12] particular renewal is not as high as it was for the last one
[3:03:16] that we discussed.
[3:03:18] So you have our read on this information.
[3:03:21] Of course, we'll
[3:03:23] ask you to make your own interpretation as you move forward.
[3:03:27] Allison.
[3:03:27] Okay, great.
[3:03:29] So the school approached us, um
[3:03:33] Probably January.
[3:03:35] Oh, sorry. Forgot. The school approached us in January
[3:03:39] about potential sponsorship, and so we began our process
[3:03:43] of due diligence.
[3:03:45] That included a meeting with the board chair, the
[3:03:49] school leader, executive director, Dr.
[3:03:52] Danielle Miles, doing a school visit,
[3:03:56] and then just document reviews
[3:03:59] of academic
[3:04:02] documents, financial documents, operational
[3:04:05] documents, reviewing their prior year
[3:04:09] documents from the commission. And of course, we had established a
[3:04:14] good working relationship with Citizens of the World, having
[3:04:18] worked with them to pass the general obligation bond
[3:04:22] in April of
[3:04:24] 2024, '5.
[3:04:29] It was quite a year. And then also, we have
[3:04:33] a collaboration council in Kansas City in which we meet with
[3:04:37] charter leaders and KCPS leadership, and so we had a good
[3:04:40] working relationship with them. So,
[3:04:43] we did a review of that work. That is where internally we pulled in
[3:04:49] internal folks from multiple departments to review this
[3:04:52] data,
[3:04:54] and looking at their academic performance, their finance performance,
[3:04:58] their operational documents, their board governance documents,
[3:05:02] really digging into that information
[3:05:05] and seeing from that
[3:05:09] perspective, really no concerns when it came to academics
[3:05:13] or finances. Good audits.
[3:05:16] Their
[3:05:18] board governance things are online, transparent, everything
[3:05:22] is shared.
[3:05:25] So we really felt like everything was,
[3:05:31] I think, very clear and,
[3:05:37] I don't want to say above board, but everything was very clear, and we felt
[3:05:41] good about it. So brought that to our
[3:05:47] board and got approval, and so that is part of the
[3:05:51] process that we followed in order to
[3:05:54] move forward with this. So, I think we feel like
[3:05:58] they're going to be good partners.
[3:06:00] We have
[3:06:02] very similar alignment when it comes to educating the
[3:06:06] whole child, rigorous curriculum.
[3:06:10] They have very strong beliefs when it comes to
[3:06:13] restorative justice,
[3:06:16] and really, I think,
[3:06:19] student ownership of their own learning.
[3:06:21] So,
[3:06:22] they're also in a community in Kansas City that does not have a neighborhood
[3:06:26] school, and we feel very strongly that that is a great addition to our portfolio,
[3:06:30] where they are located, and now being a local and an
[3:06:34] independent school in that space is really
[3:06:38] important for that community and covering that neighborhood.
[3:06:44] They offer supports. They have a large population
[3:06:48] of McKinney-Vento students. 10% of their students are
[3:06:51] McKinney-Vento and are serviced. Mm-hmm.
[3:06:55] Yes.
[3:06:56] What is that?
[3:06:57] Oh, McKinney-Vento, students that are unhoused.
[3:07:02] And they also have a large portion of their students that
[3:07:06] have IEPs.
[3:07:09] So they really service a
[3:07:13] portion of the community that is very similar to ours and work hard to make sure
[3:07:17] that they are servicing those students.
[3:07:19] So their beliefs and philosophy is very similar to
[3:07:23] KCPS as well. So we really feel,
[3:07:26] I think, a very strong partnership with them
[3:07:30] in that way as well. So.
[3:07:34] Any questions?
[3:07:37] Mrs. Casey.
[3:07:39] Thank you, President Miller. And thank you for that and for your
[3:07:45] straightforward input about why the sponsorship is changing, et
[3:07:49] cetera. And I do think there's a lot of value in that local community
[3:07:52] relationship, the collaboration, the partnership that you've had.
[3:07:56] If you could go back to slide 13, which is the new
[3:08:00] performance contract highlights, and if you could maybe first
[3:08:04] just clarify for me, are you saying that,
[3:08:08] or the way I am interpreting this, that your expectation is just they'll
[3:08:12] just
[3:08:14] continue to do what they're doing and fall into those categories
[3:08:17] and your goal is that they'll be as good as
[3:08:21] KCPS?
[3:08:23] We provide supports along the way, so it wouldn't
[3:08:27] be a hands-off relationship if that's-
[3:08:29] Mm-hmm
[3:08:30] ... No.
[3:08:32] Did you want to-
[3:08:32] Well, really what I'm getting at is what are your specific goals?
[3:08:36] What are your expectations for the students of Citizens of the
[3:08:40] World to achieve-
[3:08:42] Mm-hmm
[3:08:42] ... in their academic outcomes?
[3:08:44] So they have set forth goals, and they have school-specific goals as
[3:08:48] well. So they're looking at
[3:08:52] changing from advanced proficient to looking at MPI
[3:08:55] growth, which I appreciate. That means they're looking at students
[3:08:59] growing out of all categories and not just focusing on
[3:09:03] proficient, advanced, and those higher categories.
[3:09:06] They're continuing to look at students
[3:09:09] and
[3:09:11] the chronically absent, so lowering the percent of students that are chronically
[3:09:15] absent. They do tend to look more at
[3:09:19] the ADA attendance, so average daily attendance over
[3:09:23] proportional attendance, because budgets are based on that.
[3:09:28] So they do have an attendance goal.
[3:09:30] They do have an attendance or a-
[3:09:34] Sorry, an academic goal that's based on subgroup performance as well, which is very
[3:09:38] important. They focus very much on making sure that
[3:09:42] they're paying attention to the performance of historically marginalized
[3:09:46] student groups.
[3:09:48] So what we do then is, of course, we have
[3:09:53] monthly meetings with our sponsor charters.
[3:09:57] So we're collaborating monthly with our sponsor charters.
[3:10:02] We also are,
[3:10:04] of course, as a sponsor, available with our content area
[3:10:08] experts. We have monthly collaboration meetings where we're working with this
[3:10:12] and problems of practice, things like chronic
[3:10:16] absenteeism amongst our system. One thing I noticed as I was
[3:10:21] looking at that slide is only seven out of the 20
[3:10:26] systems in Kansas City, or LEAs in Kansas City, got two or more
[3:10:30] of the four points available on
[3:10:34] the APR. So two-thirds of the system
[3:10:38] is struggling with proportional attendance or the way
[3:10:42] we measure proportional attendance.
[3:10:44] So it is something that the system needs to figure
[3:10:48] out how we're going to work on that.
[3:10:50] So it's not a matter of, "Good luck to you.
[3:10:55] Here's your goals. Good luck to you." How are we going to work on
[3:10:59] this together?
[3:10:59] Yeah. And I appreciate that. And maybe it's just the format or the approach in
[3:11:03] the presentation, but do you, as a sponsor,
[3:11:07] have specific academic outcome goals by year,
[3:11:11] much back to Pam's point earlier.
[3:11:16] It's one thing to say
[3:11:18] that it looks like you've just restated what the categories are
[3:11:22] here, but what are the specific academic outcome goals in
[3:11:26] ELA, in math, in science, and in
[3:11:30] social studies as to
[3:11:33] achievement and when you will get there?
[3:11:36] In other words, specifics.
[3:11:38] Yeah.
[3:11:39] Pam, maybe you can add.
[3:11:40] Yeah. I'm just blown away at just how we zoom in on the
[3:11:44] same stuff.
[3:11:46] And I think what's troubling us is
[3:11:51] this looks like just a
[3:11:55] restatement of the left side, and
[3:11:58] there's no meat to how you're going
[3:12:02] to grow students, improve academic outcome, by
[3:12:06] what percentage, when, what are your projections, what are your goals?
[3:12:10] And we're looking at the
[3:12:13] academic performance, and we're troubled.
[3:12:16] And we're trying to figure out what are you going to do differently and it's just
[3:12:19] not here.
[3:12:20] So we need you to tell us what you're going to do.
[3:12:24] And I will add, the academic outcomes
[3:12:28] based on achievement, the MAP scores
[3:12:32] as presented for the 2025 data, they are better
[3:12:36] than
[3:12:38] Kansas City.
[3:12:40] But unless you have a specific goal, and we all want our children to
[3:12:44] achieve excellence, all children,
[3:12:47] so what are the goals to get to all children achieving excellence?
[3:12:53] And I just don't see that. And maybe it's just a factor they're there in the
[3:12:56] contract, but they're not being presented to us, and that's a
[3:13:00] factor of the presentation, that we need
[3:13:04] to see specifics. Were you going
[3:13:08] to s-
[3:13:09] Maybe let me reframe, if that helps.
[3:13:11] Mm-hmm.
[3:13:12] So do you have goals across the five-year renewal period for the
[3:13:16] percent of students scoring-
[3:13:19] The school does
[3:13:19] ... proficient or higher?
[3:13:20] The school does.
[3:13:21] The school has it.
[3:13:21] It's in the school's specific goals, yes.
[3:13:23] Right. And we're approving or being asked to approve,
[3:13:27] in this case, and because it came to us in this form
[3:13:31] of the agenda, that
[3:13:37] based on your recommendation, and your recommendation being based on
[3:13:41] the contract that you have in place, which includes the
[3:13:46] expectation in academic outcomes, and I'm asking
[3:13:50] what is that expectation? Unless someone knows where they're going, they're not
[3:13:54] going to get there. And we should
[3:13:59] have high expectations, very high,
[3:14:02] so that we can achieve the best, and I just don't see what those
[3:14:06] expectations are.
[3:14:10] And
[3:14:12] I don't have that.
[3:14:16] I think it's in my folder that's sitting at my chair.
[3:14:18] So they have
[3:14:20] goals for ELA and math to move
[3:14:24] to
[3:14:25] on target by year five of their contract
[3:14:29] for ELA and math.
[3:14:34] Well, and I appreciate that, and it's
[3:14:38] more to the department that we need to be looking at it in
[3:14:42] that way in our future presentations.
[3:14:44] And I would just say to any sponsor that this is a really
[3:14:48] important job that you have and that you should,
[3:14:52] not calling yourself out here, and you're brand new to this school as
[3:14:56] well, and I appreciate it, but we should have an expectation of every
[3:15:00] sponsor to have a specific target,
[3:15:04] and academic outcomes is the most important thing that we can be focused
[3:15:08] on. Obviously, there's supporting factors that we have to look at.
[3:15:11] But there should be specific targets, and they should
[3:15:14] be,
[3:15:18] we refer to them as stretch targets or SMART goals, but they need to
[3:15:22] be significant targets that are set for
[3:15:26] our schools across the state to be
[3:15:30] achieving in academic outcomes.
[3:15:33] And as a sponsor of a school, you should know what they are for
[3:15:37] each of your schools.
[3:15:40] Yes. May I comment? I think you are absolutely right, and we had the start of this
[3:15:44] conversation this past week with
[3:15:47] Lisa and Shanika, and I think it goes back to if the authority of this
[3:15:51] board is to determine whether or not the
[3:15:55] sponsor
[3:15:57] met all of its responsibilities, if we don't know what the
[3:16:00] sponsor set for that school, then we don't know if they met it or
[3:16:04] not. If the sponsor says, "Yes, we told them they had to do this, and they
[3:16:08] did," if it's vague, we don't have a good measure for that.
[3:16:12] But yet if the sponsor says, "Our goal was to improve
[3:16:16] to X number of students being proficient.
[3:16:19] They did that, so we approved that," or, "They didn't do that, and here's
[3:16:23] what we did." You're looking for those kinds of specifics because
[3:16:27] that's what Shanika will be looking at when she's
[3:16:31] evaluating whether or not they did their due diligence is whether or not they had
[3:16:34] specific goals with specific targets, with specific dates,
[3:16:38] and did they meet them, and what happens either way?
[3:16:41] Is that-
[3:16:42] Exactly. And that is when it relates to a school.
[3:16:45] And then when we're evaluating a sponsor-
[3:16:47] Excellent
[3:16:47] ... are they being effective as a sponsor?
[3:16:49] To set a mediocre goal is not being effective, but to set a
[3:16:53] goal of excellence is. And then what have they done to support their school
[3:16:57] to achieve that?
[3:16:58] Exactly. And this is not their
[3:17:01] entire performance goal contract.
[3:17:05] As I stated, this is just some specifics that were pulled
[3:17:09] out. So the way that their performance goal, and this is their,
[3:17:13] meaning Kansas City Public's performance goals are set up, it is
[3:17:17] very much, "Here's academics, and then A,
[3:17:21] B, C, D, E, F, G needs to be met to even meet the goal
[3:17:25] of academics." So that's the way they set theirs up.
[3:17:28] It doesn't look like this here, so you're right.
[3:17:32] We're just showing you a highlighted version of that, of
[3:17:36] what we're seeing when we see their renewals.
[3:17:40] So, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-
[3:17:40] Mr. Bradford. No problem.
[3:17:43] A few things.
[3:17:45] The information, and I don't know if this is a required template that's
[3:17:49] used here, but it seems like
[3:17:52] there are a few good things that are happening, but they're not highlighted.
[3:17:54] I had to dig to find those. So I want to know how that can be
[3:17:58] reframed and positioned so that we can be a little bit more efficient in looking at
[3:18:02] what we're looking at, and to make a decision.
[3:18:05] Secondly, I noticed it's
[3:18:09] partially met from an academic perspective for the last five years or
[3:18:13] so, and just echoing, what are we going to do to
[3:18:16] drill down
[3:18:19] how we get over the hump there?
[3:18:22] So I digress, but that's just something I had in my mind.
[3:18:27] What I would like to be explained to me, if you will,
[3:18:30] on the financial management piece, it started out partially met.
[3:18:34] It seemed like there was some improvement.
[3:18:36] '23 to '24 it was met, and then it was partially met
[3:18:40] '24, '25.
[3:18:42] Why is that, and could you explain what
[3:18:46] that means to the overall picture?
[3:18:48] And so this is one of those things that we talked about the sponsor with when it
[3:18:52] came to looking at their renewal application.
[3:18:55] So one area of concern was the school's failure to maintain 60
[3:18:59] days of cash on hand during the '21, '22
[3:19:03] fiscal year, as required by the performance contract, and this was the performance
[3:19:07] contract of their last sponsor. Since fiscal year '22,
[3:19:11] the school has consistently met and exceeded the 60-day cash on hand
[3:19:15] requirement, demonstrating strengthened
[3:19:19] financial management and fiscal stability.
[3:19:22] So they have improved. In response, the school
[3:19:26] has partnered closely with its financial services provider
[3:19:30] to better understand and monitor these long-term
[3:19:34] sustainability indicators.
[3:19:38] Enhancing financial planning, regular review of key fiscal
[3:19:42] matrix, and ongoing collaboration with the sponsor have been
[3:19:46] implemented to ensure the school maintains strong financial health and meets
[3:19:50] all accountability and expectations moving forward.
[3:19:54] So yes, we did see that. This is one of those things where I
[3:19:58] say, "Yes, I see this. Now, sponsor, tell me what's
[3:20:01] going on with this." So that is one of the things, and this was answered
[3:20:05] by KCPS because, again, they had to go in and do their due
[3:20:09] diligence when they're looking at, "Are we going to take this school on, and what
[3:20:13] does this look like?" And they looked at the sponsor, the commission who was the
[3:20:17] sponsor prior to, they looked at the information the commission had
[3:20:21] and said, "Okay,
[3:20:23] what's going on here?" And they talked to the school about it.
[3:20:26] So these are the responses coming from KCPS
[3:20:30] saying, "Yes, we did talk to them about that.
[3:20:32] Here's what's going on." So yes, this is one of those
[3:20:36] things that happens during the process of renewal when we're looking at
[3:20:40] this and then meeting with the sponsor to go over their
[3:20:43] recommendation.
[3:20:47] Thank you. I appreciate the response.
[3:20:49] Are there other questions?
[3:20:50] Transparency.
[3:20:52] Is there a motion that someone would like to make for this
[3:20:56] project?
[3:20:59] I move to
[3:21:01] accept the recommendation as made.
[3:21:05] Second.
[3:21:06] Okay. We have a motion and a second, and that does address
[3:21:10] your issue that they come back and
[3:21:14] re-present.
[3:21:15] Mm-hmm.
[3:21:15] Yes, it does.
[3:21:16] Okay.
[3:21:17] Is there any further discussion?
[3:21:21] Hearing none, all those in favor?
[3:21:23] Aye.
[3:21:23] Aye.
[3:21:24] Aye.
[3:21:24] Any opposition?
[3:21:26] Hearing none.
[3:21:29] Thank you very much for your presentation.
[3:21:30] Thank you.
[3:21:31] Happy-
[3:21:31] Thank you.
[3:21:32] Thank you.
[3:21:32] Thank you.
[3:21:38] Who do we have-
[3:21:40] Perry's pretty quick, I think.
[3:21:43] The budget probably won't be.
[3:21:44] Yeah, no. I was thinking about right bef-- Well, so after we get Perry done.
[3:21:49] Okay.
[3:21:49] Yeah.
[3:21:49] It fits here.
[3:21:50] Hmm?
[3:21:51] It fits here.
[3:21:51] Okay.
[3:21:53] So there's only one thing between us and lunch, right?
[3:21:58] You.
[3:21:58] Yeah.
[3:22:02] Good morning, Perry Goerl here,
[3:22:05] program administrator of Career and Technical Education, and interim-
[3:22:09] ... chief of Governmental Relations.
[3:22:14] So, as you all know, the legislative session has concluded, and so I
[3:22:18] want to just give a very brief about legislation that passed that will
[3:22:22] impact the department, and things that will be coming across your plate.
[3:22:27] There were a total of one, two, three, four, five...
[3:22:30] It looks like about seven different bills have had educational
[3:22:34] things within it, but there are three bills that you will see
[3:22:38] here in the future as it goes through, possibly, rule-making authority, or
[3:22:42] a new decision item when it comes to the budget.
[3:22:45] That first bill is Senate Bill 863, and that's where it
[3:22:49] establishes the Interscholastic Activities Association Oversight
[3:22:53] Commission.
[3:22:55] We will be going through the rule-making authority, possibly,
[3:22:59] but we will be creating a system of appeals for,
[3:23:03] as commonly known, the Missouri State High School Activities
[3:23:07] Associations.
[3:23:09] We will create an appeals committee for
[3:23:12] eligibility and for other events that may
[3:23:15] arise during the course of the year.
[3:23:18] And so we'll be working through that.
[3:23:20] The other one is the agriculture education program in
[3:23:24] elementary schools, changing it from a pilot project to a statewide
[3:23:28] program.
[3:23:29] This will be a new decision item that you will see in the future.
[3:23:33] It's not a high
[3:23:35] new decision item. I think it'll have a new decision item
[3:23:39] maybe around $250,000 total in its beginning.
[3:23:43] But what it will do is bring in a collaborative effort of the different ag
[3:23:47] education programs in the elementary that are being provided in the
[3:23:51] elementary setting, and creating
[3:23:54] resources for them,
[3:23:58] but also an individual that will help work with these organizations to
[3:24:01] streamline it to our school districts across the state.
[3:24:06] And then the last bill that was passed is House Bill 2061,
[3:24:10] which
[3:24:11] provides protections against discrimination of anti-Semitic
[3:24:16] activities in schools. And so, there will be a reporting
[3:24:20] process for school districts back here to the Department of Elementary and
[3:24:24] Secondary Education, where we will have our Title VI
[3:24:28] compliance officer investigate those.
[3:24:30] And then if deemed the policies are being broken or have been broken with school
[3:24:34] districts, there is a reporting process through the Department of Justice from
[3:24:38] there. So, those are the
[3:24:41] highlights.
[3:24:42] I want to talk a little bit about what's ahead
[3:24:46] for you all to start thinking about.
[3:24:48] We all know that come August 4th there is a primary election,
[3:24:52] and so
[3:24:53] all the seats in the House side are up for re-election.
[3:24:57] And
[3:24:58] the reason why I want to share that also is that our committee
[3:25:01] chairmanships will be changing as well.
[3:25:05] The current Education Committee on the House side chairman is running for the
[3:25:09] Senate, so there will be a new House Education
[3:25:13] Committee chairman for the FY27
[3:25:17] legislative session, and who that will be is to be determined
[3:25:21] yet. We do not know who that is. There's not a rumor on the
[3:25:25] street of who that might be. And so, that will be
[3:25:29] a change, but there also may be a new Senate
[3:25:32] education chairman as the current education
[3:25:37] chairman of the Senate is also running for US Congress, so there is a possibility
[3:25:41] that there may be two new education chairmans within the House
[3:25:46] or the House and the Senate.
[3:25:48] The budget chair will also be new this year, and so
[3:25:52] that position has actually been named, but it is always
[3:25:56] contingent on being elected to the House seat.
[3:25:59] And so time will tell on that. And so, along with this
[3:26:03] election year, a lot of the focus is going to be in and around the August
[3:26:07] 4th, because ultimately then those conversations are going to
[3:26:11] revolve around, no matter what happens on August the
[3:26:15] 4th, election-wise, and the different amendments, is that
[3:26:19] the state of Missouri is approaching budget reductions.
[3:26:22] And so when we talk about future legislation and these
[3:26:26] chairmans and things moving out, many pieces of
[3:26:30] legislations will not be able to have a high fiscal note,
[3:26:34] because we're going to be talking about budget reductions in the
[3:26:38] years to come.
[3:26:40] If you were to ask me what's going to be things that are going to be talked about
[3:26:43] in the future and next legislative session, I will share with you, I
[3:26:47] believe open enrollment will come back to the forefront.
[3:26:51] The election will be done.
[3:26:53] The current main sponsor of the
[3:26:56] open enrollment over the past several years is running for a Senate seat.
[3:27:00] And so, because of that, the open enrollment just really
[3:27:04] didn't come to the forefront. But next year, we will see open enrollment
[3:27:08] to be a topic again.
[3:27:10] School accountability measures.
[3:27:13] We have the executive order that we intend to deliver
[3:27:17] on. Those school accountability,
[3:27:20] same school accountability measure was
[3:27:24] legislation this past year.
[3:27:26] The question is, will it become legislation in the future?
[3:27:29] And I will share with you, it really will depend
[3:27:32] upon the end product that we produce.
[3:27:36] But I will also say that
[3:27:38] people are all in a good spot of where we're headed with the current executive
[3:27:41] order. And so there is a
[3:27:44] chance that we will not see any future legislation for the school
[3:27:48] accountability measure that we are currently working on.
[3:27:53] But if there is school accountability, there will also be charter schools,
[3:27:57] and those two will be tied together.
[3:28:00] Probably the main reason that charter school expansion, let me correct, the main
[3:28:03] reason the school accountability bill did not move forward this year is that
[3:28:08] it got tied up in with charter school expansion, or I should
[3:28:12] say the charter school
[3:28:16] conversation and how it impacts the state of Missouri.
[3:28:20] So if those two move forward, they'll probably move forward in
[3:28:23] tandem to each other in the future, but again, there's no
[3:28:27] crystal ball. They could break them apart.
[3:28:31] At the end of this session,
[3:28:33] there was a huge, I won't say huge, omnibus bill, because huge to me is
[3:28:37] 31 subjects, and this one was only 12 subjects,
[3:28:41] so I would call it a minibus last year.
[3:28:44] But there was conversation
[3:28:47] in and around ESA oversight.
[3:28:50] At the end of the session, there was conversation of bringing the empowerment
[3:28:54] scholarship activity funds back to the department and for us to
[3:28:57] oversight.
[3:28:59] I look for that to be a conversation to happen again this coming
[3:29:03] legislative session. Not that the treasurer's
[3:29:06] department
[3:29:08] is not being able to fulfill that, just in the
[3:29:12] part of the accountability side. How are those students doing?
[3:29:16] Because we currently collect all that data and so on.
[3:29:19] So I really believe that you will see some conversations in and
[3:29:23] around that.
[3:29:25] I also believe you're going to see a lot of effort in and around and focused on
[3:29:28] supporting teachers. Many of the
[3:29:31] omnibus bills that we
[3:29:35] had this year had different provisions in there to support teachers in the
[3:29:38] classroom, whether it would be the beginning of the year
[3:29:41] school training that
[3:29:45] the teachers have to do each and every year, or whether it's
[3:29:50] providing some liability coverage for them for different events.
[3:29:53] I think we're going to see supportive teachers in legislation.
[3:29:58] In doing that, you're also going to see the virtual screen time bill, I believe,
[3:30:02] to show back up, or not show back up, to come back
[3:30:06] again. And how much is too much
[3:30:09] screen time for students? And so,
[3:30:13] last session, the legislation
[3:30:16] took, I won't say 180-degree turn, but it started at one
[3:30:20] spot, and it really started opening the door to great
[3:30:23] conversations around screen time and how important it is for
[3:30:27] students to be able to interact with each other without
[3:30:31] having too much screen time. And where that legislation
[3:30:35] ended at, at the end of the session, I believe, was at a very
[3:30:39] good starting point. It involved the department,
[3:30:43] the commissioner, to creating a work group to start investigating
[3:30:47] that.
[3:30:48] And so, I believe that legislation
[3:30:52] will come back in the near future.
[3:30:56] The other thing is legislator priorities.
[3:30:58] You all as a group have legislator priorities.
[3:31:02] There was a legislator priority last year that wasn't
[3:31:05] completed. It became a part of the omnibus bill, and then when
[3:31:09] that bill didn't occur, it didn't move forward.
[3:31:13] But we had a legislative initiative for
[3:31:17] our CT advisory group and our current technical education advisory
[3:31:21] group, just changing the terms on it,
[3:31:24] and who could be on that bill.
[3:31:26] We'll need to make sure that that legislation is filed again this coming year so we
[3:31:30] can move forward with that
[3:31:33] advisory group and make sure that it's meeting the needs and demands of
[3:31:37] current technical education. And then the other board priorities as you all, as a
[3:31:41] group, will talk about here in the future,
[3:31:44] and providing those as a platform as well.
[3:31:48] So,
[3:31:50] I'd entertain any questions about
[3:31:54] current legislation, things that
[3:31:56] are out there.
[3:31:59] One question I had is how many bills do you think were submitted in
[3:32:03] last session that had education in them?
[3:32:07] There were, I think it was 321 bills.
[3:32:12] That's just over 10% of the total bills filed,
[3:32:16] had education in them.
[3:32:19] Yeah. And I mean, I just want to bring the magnitude of this.
[3:32:22] Everybody's talking about education when-
[3:32:24] Right
[3:32:24] ... it gets passed forward and things, and so it's a major undertaking and
[3:32:28] very important things. It can hurt us and help us.
[3:32:31] It's a lot to read.
[3:32:36] Thanks, Perry. Just I
[3:32:38] guess a general comment for the board, right?
[3:32:40] I mean,
[3:32:41] legislators can
[3:32:43] introduce a bill on anything.
[3:32:47] I think in some cases, and a couple of us have had this
[3:32:49] conversation, part of the reason I think you're seeing a lot
[3:32:53] of bills introduced in the legislature is because this
[3:32:57] board and local school districts aren't addressing
[3:33:01] issues,
[3:33:02] I think, in some cases. The cellphone issue is something that
[3:33:06] comes to mind, right? It's been an issue forever.
[3:33:09] Very few local school districts did anything about it until it was required by
[3:33:13] state law. Right?
[3:33:15] Cellphones are an issue. Screen time, I think, is another one.
[3:33:19] And I know that's a discussion we've had as a board is what authority
[3:33:23] do we have, right? And I think generally, we have broad
[3:33:26] authority to do rulemaking on anything that is not
[3:33:31] sort of prohibited or otherwise addressed in statute.
[3:33:35] And so, again, just a comment. I think that the board can
[3:33:41] do more
[3:33:43] to address some of these issues, like screen time.
[3:33:45] I'm not saying screen time is the issue, but if this
[3:33:49] board thinks screen time
[3:33:51] needs to be addressed, I don't know that we have to wait for the legislature to act
[3:33:55] to do something.
[3:33:57] That would be the same with cell phones, and other issues that we see pop
[3:34:01] up. So,
[3:34:03] my perspective on this is
[3:34:07] sometimes you get some good things from the legislature and sometimes you don't.
[3:34:11] But part of what you see, I think, is a failure of this
[3:34:14] board to take action on things that are important and
[3:34:19] quite frankly, school districts.
[3:34:22] When a school district is afraid to address a cell phone
[3:34:26] policy or come up with something,
[3:34:28] what else are they not addressing?
[3:34:30] So, I think that's why you see a lot of these bills.
[3:34:33] Public education is obviously a big interest, and I know we'll get
[3:34:37] into this more in our session in July and
[3:34:41] beyond. But I just would again say that the board
[3:34:45] does have
[3:34:46] broad authority to tackle some of these things without
[3:34:50] waiting for the legislature to act.
[3:34:52] Thank you.
[3:34:55] And I think that goes to the discussion that,
[3:34:59] Brooks, you brought up, that importance in our retreat of really
[3:35:02] understanding
[3:35:04] the scope and authority of the board.
[3:35:08] Yeah. And I don't know how you follow 300 whatever bills, so
[3:35:12] thank you. That's what I meant to say at the beginning.
[3:35:16] And reading legislative text is not fun, and you
[3:35:20] have to cross-reference sections of statute to understand exactly what it's trying
[3:35:23] to do, and so thank you for doing all of that.
[3:35:26] I
[3:35:27] left that part out. So Perry, I do appreciate it.
[3:35:32] Any other questions?
[3:35:35] I just want to thank you as the board, as I step into my other role.
[3:35:40] You have to talk about your why,
[3:35:43] and career and technical education is my why.
[3:35:47] It's why I started, and it's where I hope to end.
[3:35:52] So as you all sit in the seat, understand your why, because it's very,
[3:35:56] very important.
[3:35:58] You can't do this job without team members back here,
[3:36:03] and Rebecca's team
[3:36:05] in budget and planning, and Shelly Woods, and the fiscal note
[3:36:09] side. It takes a team effort, and
[3:36:13] Pam Victor is retired now. The amount of work and time that her and I
[3:36:17] spent together
[3:36:18] was just incredible.
[3:36:21] And I know Rebecca and I went to the capital here the other day, and she thought I
[3:36:24] was leaving,
[3:36:25] and I gave her the news as I walked back.
[3:36:27] "No, I'm still here." So,
[3:36:30] it's
[3:36:32] the role of this position and the ability to touch,
[3:36:35] I just had no idea.
[3:36:38] I stepped into it to be the interim, to be the transition,
[3:36:41] and I got to have the opportunity for two and a half
[3:36:46] years and three legislative sessions.
[3:36:49] I wouldn't trade the
[3:36:52] opportunity for anything. It's been one of the greatest opportunities
[3:36:56] I've ever had
[3:36:58] in my 34 years in education. So, thank you.
[3:37:02] Thank you for your service on that, Eric. We appreciate it very much.
[3:37:05] You'll miss dealing with the lawmakers over there.
[3:37:09] Well,
[3:37:10] they have somehow found my private phone number.
[3:37:17] Okay, so-
[3:37:17] Brooks, you gave that to him, right?
[3:37:19] Wasn't that-
[3:37:19] Yeah, he sent it to me, and I put it on Facebook and said, "Here you go."
[3:37:24] Anybody who wants to talk to him.
[3:37:26] So now what we're going to do is,
[3:37:28] if it's all right, we'll break for lunch and come back
[3:37:32] at 12:35. Would that be okay?
[3:37:37] Kyle, I would imagine your report will be a while, so
[3:37:41] yeah.
[3:37:42] Okay, very good. So we'll adjourn for a lunch break.
[4:10:04] We'll call our meeting back to order at this time and move on
[4:10:08] to the budget report. Dr. Cruz.
[4:10:32] Good afternoon. Kyle Cruz, deputy commissioner for financial and
[4:10:35] administrative services. And first of all, I'd like to welcome
[4:10:39] our two new board members.
[4:10:41] Very nice to meet you, gentlemen. Glad you're on the board.
[4:10:45] As we go through today's presentation, as board member
[4:10:49] Carrie Casey said, we do have three parts today.
[4:10:52] We will look briefly at the current year budget,
[4:10:56] that is the 2025, 2026 budget, which
[4:11:00] we refer to as the FY fiscal year
[4:11:04] '26 budget. And I'm hoping to use that to provide,
[4:11:08] especially our new members, with some background and almost
[4:11:11] a landscape view of the budget process and how it
[4:11:15] works. So I'll begin by just giving you a bit about the
[4:11:18] timeline of how a budget process works.
[4:11:22] The budget for any given year starts generally in July,
[4:11:27] and the department has from July until the 1st of
[4:11:31] October to assemble the budget.
[4:11:34] The budget has to be turned in by October 1st.
[4:11:37] And so between July 1st and October 1st, we assemble the
[4:11:41] budget,
[4:11:42] we develop the core budget pieces,
[4:11:46] which are basically based on what was in the previous
[4:11:50] budget. They're the core parts of the funding.
[4:11:53] And then there are portions of funding we refer to as new decision items,
[4:11:58] and those are items where we're going to ask for additional
[4:12:01] funding for various programs that either are calculated to
[4:12:05] need more funding, or they could be new pieces
[4:12:09] the legislature passed that we are now required to implement.
[4:12:13] And we'll also work through
[4:12:16] a budget we call a supplemental budget, and
[4:12:20] that would be requests for additional funding for the
[4:12:24] budget that is actually in progress at that moment.
[4:12:28] So it's kind of a multilayered situation.
[4:12:30] But
[4:12:32] that is the process. We go through, get our budget done, turned in by
[4:12:36] October 1st. The board reviews the budget in August and September,
[4:12:40] gives final approval in September. Get to October 1st, we turn it in.
[4:12:45] Throughout the fall, we answer questions from legislators.
[4:12:48] And then when the legislative session starts in January,
[4:12:52] that is when the budget is up for consideration.
[4:12:56] And the legislature holds hearings in both the House and in the
[4:13:00] Senate about the budget requests.
[4:13:02] There is a governor's recommended version.
[4:13:06] There will be a House-recommended version.
[4:13:08] There will be a Senate-recommended version.
[4:13:11] Then there will be, finally, a truly agreed and finally passed
[4:13:15] version, essentially what the legislature votes
[4:13:18] out.
[4:13:20] And then the governor has usually between the middle of May
[4:13:24] and the 1st of July to take action on that budget,
[4:13:28] veto it, sign it, do some kind of action.
[4:13:31] And that's actually where we are right now.
[4:13:33] So that's kind of just a bit of background, and we'll
[4:13:36] reference that as we go through today.
[4:13:39] But
[4:13:40] we're going to start by looking at
[4:13:42] the DESE budget for fiscal year '26.
[4:13:46] And again, that is the 2025-2026
[4:13:50] year, which we are in right now.
[4:13:54] This is an executive summary,
[4:13:56] and it reflects the budget that was passed and went into
[4:14:00] effect July 1st, 2025. It'll be in
[4:14:03] effect until June 30th, here in a couple of weeks,
[4:14:07] and it does include the line item vetoes
[4:14:11] issued by Governor Kehoe, and we also give some explanation of
[4:14:15] personnel and operating expenses. Please note, this is an overview.
[4:14:20] The entire budget itself is a multiple-page
[4:14:24] spreadsheet with many, many line items, and we try to
[4:14:27] condense it for your
[4:14:30] summary purposes.
[4:14:35] This pie chart shows the entire budget for DESE, the summary
[4:14:39] of the total appropriations that came through from the
[4:14:42] legislature and then signed by the governor. This is the entire thing.
[4:14:46] The total authorized budget for DESE for the current year is about
[4:14:49] $8.5 billion.
[4:14:52] Of that,
[4:14:53] 4.67 billion is from general revenues.
[4:14:58] There's about 1.7 billion that comes from federal funds,
[4:15:02] and about 2.1 billion comes from other funds, which would include Prop
[4:15:06] C sales tax, lottery, gaming, a variety of other
[4:15:10] funding streams that feed into education budget.
[4:15:15] Please feel free to stop at any point.
[4:15:19] We can also look at the total appropriations by category, and you'll notice the
[4:15:23] orange
[4:15:25] pie
[4:15:26] slice is the biggest, and that is school funding.
[4:15:30] It's essentially a passthrough from DESE.
[4:15:33] We get the money in, we send it out according to the
[4:15:37] formulas that are in play.
[4:15:40] You'll notice that DESE operations, personnel, our expenses for the
[4:15:44] department itself is about 2% of the total budget.
[4:15:48] And then you can see the other areas of vocational special education, about
[4:15:52] 1.25 billion.
[4:15:54] Leadership and academic, about 342 million.
[4:15:57] Educator quality, 105 million. And then there's a childcare
[4:16:01] subsidy and childhood distributions of about 691 million.
[4:16:07] If you look at DESE specific and our operations, our personnel and
[4:16:11] operating expenses, we have
[4:16:13] 1,818.68 full-time
[4:16:17] positions,
[4:16:19] and this table kind of breaks out where they all are.
[4:16:22] I would draw attention to the fact that our largest
[4:16:25] concentrations of personnel are in the area of
[4:16:29] adult learning and rehabilitation, about
[4:16:32] 658 individual positions. And
[4:16:36] then in the board-operated schools area,
[4:16:40] 632 positions. And those are the schools, the Missouri
[4:16:44] School for the Severely Disabled, Missouri School for the Blind, Missouri School
[4:16:47] for the Deaf.
[4:16:49] My part of the DESE
[4:16:51] organization, Financial Administrator Services, 84
[4:16:55] FTE. Learning Services has 206.31
[4:17:00] FTE. And then there are several commissions, including Charter School
[4:17:03] Commission.
[4:17:05] There's a commission for
[4:17:08] the hard of hearing and for assistive technology,
[4:17:12] and there's 21.4 FTEs that are devoted to those commissions.
[4:17:17] All told,
[4:17:19] the DESE budget is about 1.92%, just under 2% of the
[4:17:23] entire budget.
[4:17:26] Here's another
[4:17:28] way to display the DESE operations, and you can see again, as I mentioned,
[4:17:32] the two largest pieces in terms of
[4:17:37] funding expended from DESE and board-operated schools and
[4:17:41] adult learning and rehab.
[4:17:45] When we talk about school funding, the biggest category out of the first slide,
[4:17:50] you'll see that we send funding to schools that
[4:17:53] totals just under $6 billion, and that's about
[4:17:57] 70% of the total appropriation for the DESE budget.
[4:18:01] The foundation formula is a state-written formula
[4:18:05] that is actually in statute, and it calculates how much
[4:18:09] money goes out to each school or local education
[4:18:13] agency, LEA.
[4:18:15] It's about $4.282 billion.
[4:18:19] School transportation,
[4:18:21] and that pays for kids getting to and from school.
[4:18:25] It doesn't pay for field trips or baseball games, things like that.
[4:18:28] We send out about 376 and a half million.
[4:18:32] There is a small schools program built into the school funding
[4:18:36] formula, where schools that are under 350 students
[4:18:40] get additional support funding-wise.
[4:18:43] And then there is $1.3 billion that comes
[4:18:47] from what's called the School District Trust Fund,
[4:18:51] and that's actually generated by a one-cent sales tax that was passed back
[4:18:54] in 1982,
[4:18:56] and the original purpose was to provide schools additional funding and
[4:19:00] also help offset some property taxes.
[4:19:03] And since that time, there are several districts that still use half that
[4:19:07] money to offset property taxes, but a majority of schools, in the
[4:19:11] time being,
[4:19:13] their communities have voted to waive that
[4:19:16] portion, and so the entire Prop C funding for that school district
[4:19:20] goes to the school. Again, that's about 1.3 billion.
[4:19:25] Yes, sir.
[4:19:26] Yeah, I got a question. It's down in the foundation formula.
[4:19:30] I see there's a sports wagering for education fund.
[4:19:34] It's only like a million dollars. Is that just because it's new?
[4:19:38] Or I figured-
[4:19:38] Yeah
[4:19:38] ... it would be higher.
[4:19:38] That's the sports betting line item that actually went into effect
[4:19:42] in, it was December or January. And so since it's current
[4:19:46] year budget, they put in a very low amount for sports
[4:19:50] wagering. I will note, though, that
[4:19:54] I'm not sure if there's any money in there yet, and part of that's because
[4:19:58] the companies that do the sports betting can recoup
[4:20:02] the money they've put out for the program first before any dollars
[4:20:06] come into the treasury. So
[4:20:09] I think in next year's budget, the amount is still under $7 million,
[4:20:14] so it's not considered a major component supporting the
[4:20:18] budget at this time.
[4:20:19] Okay. But is it, in theory, it could get up to where like the
[4:20:23] lottery funds are? Something I'm guessing. I don't know.
[4:20:26] In theory. I think the projections I saw were it might top out at
[4:20:30] 100 million. I don't know. That's a long time back.
[4:20:34] Got it. Yeah, no, it just seems like they, as part of the selling on it, it's like,
[4:20:38] "Oh, it helps schools," but-
[4:20:40] That was part of the promotion. You are correct.
[4:20:44] Yes.
[4:20:44] Wanted to ask about that.
[4:20:46] Yeah. I will note, since you brought up the line items
[4:20:50] here, if you look at the
[4:20:53] Outstanding Schools Trust Fund, the Lottery Proceeds Fund, and...
[4:20:57] Sorry, my mistake. The Lottery Proceeds Fund, the State School
[4:21:00] Moneys Fund, and Classroom Trust Fund.
[4:21:04] Lottery is self-explanatory. That's funds from lottery.
[4:21:07] State School Moneys Fund is money that comes from cigarette taxes
[4:21:11] and county foreign insurance tax.
[4:21:14] And Classroom Trust Fund is gaming money.
[4:21:17] And I think it's worthy of note that current year,
[4:21:21] we're going to come in about $138
[4:21:24] million under the appropriation.
[4:21:27] You see, when DESE gets an appropriation from the
[4:21:31] legislature in the budget,
[4:21:34] that gives us permission to spend up to that amount or distribute up
[4:21:38] to that amount, but then the cash actually has to materialize.
[4:21:42] And for current year, we're going to be about $138 million
[4:21:46] short among those three categories.
[4:21:49] And so school districts are actually going to receive less in
[4:21:53] foundation formula funding than the calculated
[4:21:57] amount, which is called the state adequacy target.
[4:22:01] So I'll probably talk more about that here in a little bit.
[4:22:04] Thank you.
[4:22:04] Thank you for the question.
[4:22:08] Okay. We're going to talk about our budget in terms of four broad categories:
[4:22:13] childcare, subsidy, and childhood distributions, educator quality, leadership,
[4:22:16] teacher development, expanding literacy and academic support, and vocational,
[4:22:20] special ed, health, nutrition, other services.
[4:22:23] Please understand these are artificial categories.
[4:22:26] We've grouped them for your convenience because they are similar in
[4:22:29] nature. And in the budget itself,
[4:22:32] these are each individual line items.
[4:22:34] The budget itself is a very long document, and there are very specific
[4:22:38] items in the budget, such as to Department of Elementary Secondary
[4:22:42] Education, Office of Educator Quality,
[4:22:47] $282,000 for the purposes
[4:22:50] of registered youth apprenticeships.
[4:22:53] That's an example of what the budget reads, and there are lines like that
[4:22:57] from beginning to end of the budget.
[4:22:59] We've grouped these for your convenience
[4:23:01] So under childcare subsidy and childhood distributions, we total up
[4:23:05] about $692 million, which is 8% of total
[4:23:09] appropriations.
[4:23:10] We do distribute childcare subsidy to help pay for
[4:23:14] childcare
[4:23:16] for low-income
[4:23:18] pre-K kids. We do subsidy for foster kids who are in
[4:23:22] custody of the state. There's also early childhood special education in
[4:23:26] this portion of the budget, and we also do put out about
[4:23:29] $88 million in First Steps. This is just
[4:23:33] one artificial division of the budget, childcare
[4:23:37] subsidy and childhood distributions.
[4:23:41] Then we can look at educator quality, leadership, and teacher
[4:23:45] development, and for these categories, it includes career ladder,
[4:23:49] which is a program that allows teachers with at least two years'
[4:23:53] experience to make additional dollars by doing additional work in their local
[4:23:57] district if their district chooses to add the career ladder program,
[4:24:01] and there is a district contribution for that.
[4:24:05] We have the teacher baseline salary grant, which is there to support school
[4:24:08] districts and local education agencies who
[4:24:13] are not yet able to pay at the
[4:24:17] statutorily prescribed salary of
[4:24:19] $40,000. So if a school's paying at
[4:24:22] $35,000 for their base pay, then for
[4:24:26] teachers who are on their salary schedule below 40,
[4:24:29] the teacher baseline salary grant is available for those schools to
[4:24:33] apply and receive funding to support those teachers' salaries to get to the
[4:24:37] minimum of $40,000. That's about at $33 million total.
[4:24:42] We have a Teacher of the Year program.
[4:24:43] We have the Missouri Leadership Development System,
[4:24:47] MLDS, and Missouri Teacher Development System, MTDS,
[4:24:52] which Dr. Katnik referenced earlier today when they were talking about
[4:24:55] programs to prepare teachers and building leaders.
[4:24:59] And altogether, this artificial
[4:25:03] division of the budget works out to about $105 million, about
[4:25:07] 1% of the total appropriation.
[4:25:11] C is expanding literacy and academic support, and this
[4:25:14] includes all the federal title funds.
[4:25:17] You may have heard of Title I, Title II, Title III.
[4:25:23] Title I
[4:25:26] is
[4:25:28] largely for students who are considered low-income or
[4:25:31] disadvantaged, and there's an allocation from the federal
[4:25:35] government to each of our school districts, and it's calculated based
[4:25:39] on the demographics of that area. And so,
[4:25:43] areas with higher
[4:25:46] percentage of students who would qualify for low income would generally
[4:25:50] receive a larger allocation in Title I,
[4:25:54] and those funds are used for reading and math instructional materials,
[4:25:58] academic coaches. There's some funding for parental engagement,
[4:26:03] other things to support those students.
[4:26:05] Title II
[4:26:07] is actually for effective instruction.
[4:26:09] It can include things like professional development.
[4:26:12] It could include
[4:26:13] using the dollars to fund class size reduction, that is,
[4:26:17] hire another teacher to reduce sizes in classes.
[4:26:21] And then Title III is for English language learners, immigrant students,
[4:26:25] and usually provides supplemental materials for English
[4:26:29] learning and translators, translations, materials that have been translated.
[4:26:33] And Title IV is student support and enrichment,
[4:26:37] and usually those dollars are spent on things like technology,
[4:26:41] perhaps some science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
[4:26:45] programs, or even training for teachers in those areas.
[4:26:48] So those are all federal allocations, and DESE serves as a pass-through
[4:26:52] for those, and each district will
[4:26:55] submit a budget to us of how they plan to spend those dollars,
[4:26:59] and then the dollars can be accessed by the districts.
[4:27:02] Also in this grouping, we included the Imagination Library, and
[4:27:06] that is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, the program that
[4:27:10] sends free books to students from birth to age
[4:27:14] five.
[4:27:16] It received $6 million this year. You may have heard
[4:27:20] that the Imagination Library had funding cut
[4:27:24] for next year, and so this $6 million appropriation that we
[4:27:28] have this year has been reduced to $2 million for next year.
[4:27:32] And unfortunately, that means that we're not going to be able to accept any new
[4:27:36] enrollments, and we'll be able to send books until
[4:27:40] the appropriation runs out, which it will be sometime probably in the first
[4:27:44] half of next year. And then the program, the contract expires
[4:27:48] at the end of December. So we'll have to
[4:27:52] perhaps hope that
[4:27:54] some local agencies can pick up the Imagination Library,
[4:27:58] where it has been a statewide effort.
[4:28:01] Also in this group, professional development for our evidence-based literacy
[4:28:05] program. There is the K through three reading assessment and
[4:28:09] dyslexia screening and our work on evidence-based literacy
[4:28:13] program, which is the letters training and getting all
[4:28:17] districts to use the science of reading as their instructional
[4:28:20] methodology for reading.
[4:28:22] Any questions so far?
[4:28:26] Then let's look at...
[4:28:28] Okay, here's another way to look at the expanding literacy and academic support.
[4:28:32] Again, title programs are a big portion
[4:28:36] of this dollar total.
[4:28:42] D, our vocational special education, health, nutrition.
[4:28:46] We have career and tech education at about $82.7
[4:28:49] million. Voc rehab,
[4:28:53] $70 million and change. Special education, about $235 million.
[4:28:58] And you can see how it breaks out in pie chart form.
[4:29:01] You'll see special education, $235.5 million is a
[4:29:05] pretty big chunk of this- ... division of the budget.
[4:29:09] You can see school nutrition services, about 331 million.
[4:29:13] We also include in this grouping sheltered workshops.
[4:29:17] There's a category for special education excess costs,
[4:29:22] and that is if you have a special education student in your district, your school,
[4:29:26] that
[4:29:28] requires
[4:29:30] services that exceed three times what your
[4:29:34] district has usually spent on a student, then the district
[4:29:38] can apply for reimbursement for the amounts above that three
[4:29:42] times amount. And then there's a variety of other smaller programs
[4:29:46] and services that we just lumped into a category we called multiple programs
[4:29:50] and services of 442 million and change.
[4:29:54] And that's a brief look at the fiscal year '26 budget.
[4:29:58] And again, that is the budget that's in play at this moment,
[4:30:02] and
[4:30:03] we're headed towards the end of this budget.
[4:30:05] But I'd be glad to answer any questions if there are any.
[4:30:11] Okay.
[4:30:12] Joshua, could you put up... Go ahead.
[4:30:17] Just, I guess, a general comment on
[4:30:21] the budget.
[4:30:24] I know a lot of it is mandated by law,
[4:30:29] and I think the discretionary part of the budget is relatively small.
[4:30:33] Yes.
[4:30:36] But this fiscal year, for example,
[4:30:40] I think the
[4:30:45] budget that we submitted
[4:30:48] never really had a chance to be... There wasn't enough money there,
[4:30:52] and I think we knew that when we submitted the recommendation.
[4:30:55] Mm-hmm.
[4:30:57] And
[4:30:59] so my
[4:31:00] comment or feedback is,
[4:31:02] it would be nice to-- And you do a fantastic job
[4:31:07] presenting this information in a way that we can, I don't want to say
[4:31:10] easily understand, but it's
[4:31:13] more understandable, I think, than it used to be,
[4:31:16] which is great. But it would be nice to,
[4:31:20] as we have these budget discussions,
[4:31:24] if tough choices have to be made, right?
[4:31:27] Yeah.
[4:31:27] And if our state adequacy target is 130 million
[4:31:31] or whatever it was less than we thought,
[4:31:34] and we know that we're not going to get any additional money
[4:31:39] in the next fiscal year,
[4:31:41] what do we do? Do we just leave that 130 million unfunded, or do
[4:31:45] we find places, right, where we can,
[4:31:49] I don't want to say move money around, but request less in
[4:31:53] some... Right? Even though everything is there for a reason, I get that,
[4:31:57] but if we have to make those decisions, it would be
[4:32:00] having the discussion about what changes we would make I think would be
[4:32:04] helpful.
[4:32:05] Sure. Let me speak to that for a moment.
[4:32:08] First off, about the 138 million that we're short in lottery and gaming and
[4:32:12] cigarette tax. When this budget was passed and went into
[4:32:16] effect in the past, last year, July 1st, at that
[4:32:20] point, we were not aware that was going to be a likely shortfall.
[4:32:24] And
[4:32:26] the inner workings of DESE, we pay money
[4:32:30] to schools on a monthly basis for the foundation formula,
[4:32:35] and we're trying to pay at the state adequacy
[4:32:38] target, which this year is 7,145 per
[4:32:42] ADA, okay?
[4:32:45] But in years past, there's been situations where there ended up
[4:32:49] being a shortfall in cash that came in, so where we wouldn't be able to
[4:32:53] pay the total appropriation.
[4:32:55] So the practice has been that we start paying at a lower level
[4:32:59] and then build throughout the year.
[4:33:02] So you get to June and you still have a relatively even payment.
[4:33:06] Because there was a year back at the beginning of my career where there essentially
[4:33:10] wasn't a June payment, and that's a tough spot to be in if you're a school
[4:33:13] district.
[4:33:15] So we actually started paying this year at $6,900
[4:33:19] at that rate,
[4:33:21] in July of '25.
[4:33:23] And throughout the fall I was consulting with OA Budget and said, "Hey,
[4:33:28] we need to move the state adequacy target payment up."
[4:33:32] And I kept getting the response, "Well, there's not cash in those funds yet
[4:33:36] available." And so in about January, February,
[4:33:40] we did a deeper dive into, okay, well there's not cash there. What's going on?
[4:33:44] And we actually worked with OA Budget to go back and look at the
[4:33:48] last five years of the level of
[4:33:51] appropriation versus what actually came in, and it was really
[4:33:55] interesting. At the beginning of the five years,
[4:33:58] the appropriation was below what was being received per
[4:34:02] year, and it actually built a balance in the fund.
[4:34:06] And so after a couple of years, the legislature raised the
[4:34:10] appropriation actually above the amount that came
[4:34:13] in on a yearly basis, and that, over a period of about three years,
[4:34:17] used up the balance that had grown in that fund.
[4:34:21] But then the appropriation was not right-sized to match the
[4:34:25] amount that was actually coming in on a yearly basis.
[4:34:28] And this year the shortfall ended up being 138 million among those three funds.
[4:34:33] So
[4:34:34] the good news of that story is that
[4:34:38] we're actually going to end this year paying a little bit above
[4:34:41] 6,900, higher than what we started.
[4:34:44] I think it's 6,958 and change is where we ended up.
[4:34:47] We were looking to pay 7,145, so there is a shortfall.
[4:34:52] But for fiscal year '27 budget,
[4:34:55] since this issue had come to light, the legislators
[4:34:59] actually made efforts to
[4:35:02] reduce the appropriation appropriately in lottery and
[4:35:06] cigarette and gaming tax, and then that left
[4:35:10] a gap. And at least in the budget as submitted
[4:35:13] to the governor, they filled that gap
[4:35:18] Mostly, maybe entirely, with some one-time dollars.
[4:35:22] So, that was a good thing that came out of this investigation.
[4:35:25] But now to go to your question about we know it's going to be a tight budget
[4:35:29] year, so what do we do? And there's a couple of
[4:35:33] schools of thought on that.
[4:35:35] And one school of thought is that
[4:35:40] almost everything we send over as part of the budget is
[4:35:43] either a calculated amount, for example, the foundation formula.
[4:35:47] Those are very specific calculations. Here's what the formula requires.
[4:35:53] And if you don't send that full number over,
[4:35:57] then as a department,
[4:36:00] have we done the appropriate work to request
[4:36:04] support for all Missouri schools?
[4:36:06] That's the question to think about and ponder.
[4:36:09] And then there's the
[4:36:11] other aspect of, okay, it's a tight budget year,
[4:36:15] where should we offer up reductions?
[4:36:19] And
[4:36:20] there's also a school of thought that if you go into a year and
[4:36:24] you offer up a, "We're going to request 10
[4:36:28] million less in this area,"
[4:36:31] then
[4:36:33] is that taken as a
[4:36:36] goodwill
[4:36:37] gesture on the department in trying to do the right thing?
[4:36:41] Or would that perhaps be seen as, okay, so there's 10 million that was
[4:36:45] extra over there,
[4:36:47] and they keep the $10 million we offered and also cut the budget
[4:36:50] again. So it's a discussion that's probably worth having
[4:36:54] at the
[4:36:56] executive and board level about how we want to proceed on the budget when we
[4:37:00] get into the fiscal year '28 budget. Did that make sense?
[4:37:03] Yes, absolutely. Thank you.
[4:37:07] Okay. Okay.
[4:37:09] What's on the screen now, and I think you have copies at your desk, is
[4:37:13] a brief executive summary
[4:37:15] of the fiscal year '27 budget.
[4:37:18] And this is the budget that we
[4:37:21] developed
[4:37:23] last year in July, August, September, that the board approved
[4:37:27] in September. We turned it in in October,
[4:37:30] and then it went to the legislature this past January, February, March, April,
[4:37:34] May, and it has just emerged at the middle of May.
[4:37:38] And this would be the budget that goes into effect for the coming school year,
[4:37:43] the '26-27 school year, which we refer to as the fiscal year
[4:37:46] '27.
[4:37:48] It's still waiting on action from the governor, and that's why we haven't
[4:37:52] developed the full presentation for you yet, is because there are a
[4:37:56] lot of things the governor could strike in that budget,
[4:38:00] and we don't want to put out information that's not entirely correct.
[4:38:04] So at the recommendation of Ms. Casey and Mr.
[4:38:08] Otto during our last finance committee meeting, we agreed to
[4:38:12] simply bring back what we presented at the May meeting
[4:38:16] when the budget had just been passed.
[4:38:19] And this is a high-level look at what we consider the noteworthy
[4:38:23] items that are in the budget that I think you need
[4:38:27] to know about. So
[4:38:29] the first item is the foundation formula.
[4:38:31] Again, that is the funding we send to school districts across the
[4:38:35] state, and it's based on the state
[4:38:39] statute formula.
[4:38:41] The amount of core funding, that is the amount of the base level,
[4:38:45] the amount that was in last year,
[4:38:48] is going to stay the same as in the current school year, fiscal year
[4:38:51] '26.
[4:38:53] This budget includes core funding of
[4:38:55] $4.28273600 billion.
[4:39:00] And I noted this earlier, the legislature did reduce the reliance
[4:39:04] on lottery and schools money fund, and
[4:39:08] classroom trust fund. That's the lottery and cigarette and gaming tax.
[4:39:12] And that should alleviate the shortfall in those areas to a certain
[4:39:15] extent. We're projecting a shortfall of $118
[4:39:19] million in those three areas, but the
[4:39:23] legislature did plug that gap, at least partly,
[4:39:27] with
[4:39:28] some one-time dollars.
[4:39:30] That's still subject to governor action.
[4:39:32] So the legislature did make an effort, and we'll see what
[4:39:36] happens with the governor's work.
[4:39:39] I mentioned earlier a new decision item.
[4:39:42] The formula for '26-27 actually
[4:39:46] required an extra $190.6 million in order
[4:39:50] to be fully funded.
[4:39:52] And since the legislature did not appropriate an
[4:39:56] additional $190.6 million,
[4:39:59] the state adequacy target of
[4:40:03] 7,145 is not going to be achievable.
[4:40:07] So even though the formula calls for schools to get paid at a rate of
[4:40:10] 7,145, it's not going to happen.
[4:40:13] At this time, our best estimate is that
[4:40:17] given
[4:40:18] the revenues we can expect and assuming that some
[4:40:22] dollars stay in the budget and the governor doesn't strike them, we
[4:40:26] believe we'll be able to pay at a rate between 6,800
[4:40:30] and 6,900, which is pretty similar to what we have
[4:40:34] achieved this year.
[4:40:36] So it's not a terrible outcome. Again, we are paying
[4:40:39] 6,958 this year. If I had to hazard a guess,
[4:40:43] I'm thinking we may come in just at or just under
[4:40:46] 6,900
[4:40:48] for fiscal year '27, the '26-27 school year.
[4:40:51] So we're in the ballpark.
[4:40:55] Yes?
[4:40:56] I got a quick question. Going back to your first bullet here-
[4:40:59] Yes
[4:40:59] ... where you said there was a shortfall, but the
[4:41:03] legislature kind of filled that gap.
[4:41:07] Is somebody from DESE advocating or helping the
[4:41:10] legislature to-
[4:41:12] Yeah, what happened there was
[4:41:14] in doing our due diligence, watching the budget throughout,
[4:41:19] we're seeing what the legislature's appropriating
[4:41:22] And then when we dug into the lottery and cigarette
[4:41:26] and gaming tax dollars, we saw the shortfall that had
[4:41:30] occurred in fiscal year '26, and we looked into what was likely to
[4:41:34] happen in '27.
[4:41:36] And every spring, we actually go out to
[4:41:40] the conferences that are sponsored by the School
[4:41:43] Administrators' Associations, and we give budget updates, and we try to
[4:41:47] give them our best projections of what to expect for next year,
[4:41:51] because school districts between March and
[4:41:55] the end of June are building their budgets.
[4:41:58] And so I actually went to a couple conferences
[4:42:02] and laid out
[4:42:04] the way things look in terms of
[4:42:07] dollars this year, $138 million short,
[4:42:10] and dollars for next year. And at that time, we were projecting a
[4:42:14] $118 million shortfall, and I explained how that would be
[4:42:18] likely to affect school finances.
[4:42:21] And, when you put something like that out to 500 superintendents, which we had
[4:42:25] to do. We can't let them build budgets on false information.
[4:42:30] We can't let them think everything's A-okay, put the full number in there.
[4:42:35] Word got back to the legislature, and then we
[4:42:38] were in consultation then with a couple legislators who wanted to change
[4:42:41] that. And
[4:42:44] Senator Black was one. He's head of Appropriations in the Senate.
[4:42:48] He was heavily involved in working out a way to help plug that gap, and I believe
[4:42:52] they've used some dollars from,
[4:42:55] this sounds odd, the Blind Pension Fund.
[4:42:58] There's a Blind Pension Fund, and the only two uses for it are to support
[4:43:03] Missourians who are blind and to support education.
[4:43:07] So using some money in there was okay.
[4:43:09] And they've also tapped
[4:43:12] the Capital Commission Fund, the Building Commission Fund,
[4:43:16] and that's basically general revenue money, so it was accessible.
[4:43:20] And those are the two main sources they've used to help plug the gap.
[4:43:23] So did we go advocate to fill the gap?
[4:43:27] Not really, but we did explain what's going on.
[4:43:31] And the legislature,
[4:43:34] they listened and made some changes.
[4:43:36] Yeah, no, I think that's good that they did it on their own, to be
[4:43:40] honest. But I think that's one thing that we need to make sure
[4:43:45] with the transition and everything going forward, that we maintain that level of
[4:43:49] information and detail so that
[4:43:51] people in the State House, their
[4:43:55] constituents will know, "Hey, this is something that's really important.
[4:44:00] Can't just cut this."
[4:44:01] Well, and I agree, and that's a goal of mine is to make sure that you have all the
[4:44:04] information you need to,
[4:44:07] if the board chooses to actually advocate for funding for schools.
[4:44:11] So we appreciate that.
[4:44:14] Anyway, going to transportation.
[4:44:17] In the current year budget,
[4:44:19] there's about $377, $78 million
[4:44:23] for transportation that's appropriated,
[4:44:26] and it's going to be almost enough.
[4:44:28] We're going to be able to pay out at about 94% of what we
[4:44:32] should pay total for transportation.
[4:44:35] But part of the current year funding
[4:44:37] was one-time money. Actually, $15 million was marked one
[4:44:41] time. So when we look at the fiscal year
[4:44:45] '27 budget, you have the core,
[4:44:48] which is money that's not marked one time, of $361
[4:44:52] million.
[4:44:54] But then we had to ask for an additional 15.2
[4:44:58] million to get back to the same level that we have for current
[4:45:02] year.
[4:45:03] And so we did actually ask for that, and we also asked for
[4:45:07] an additional 15 million beyond that because expenses are going up.
[4:45:11] If you bought diesel fuel recently, you know what I'm talking about.
[4:45:15] The legislature did not approve the additional money,
[4:45:19] but they did put us back to, for fiscal year
[4:45:22] '27, the same amount that we have been appropriated
[4:45:26] for fiscal year '26.
[4:45:29] So
[4:45:30] next year, due to increased costs, we think we should be able to reimburse
[4:45:34] at about 90% of what the formula calls for
[4:45:38] schools to be reimbursed.
[4:45:41] Childcare subsidy.
[4:45:43] It's been a tough one.
[4:45:46] There has been a lot of federal money that has been used in not only
[4:45:50] current year, but past years to support childcare subsidy, and that has essentially
[4:45:54] run out. So we did have to request
[4:45:58] $139 million extra out of general revenue
[4:46:02] for fiscal year '27 to make the childcare subsidy thing work.
[4:46:06] There was a question about,
[4:46:10] do we move to paying on enrollment
[4:46:14] or, sorry, pay on authorization, or do we continue paying
[4:46:18] only for students who are in attendance?
[4:46:20] And things have kind of worked out now so that it looks like we're going to be
[4:46:23] paying on attendance. There's a question about how many absent days
[4:46:27] we can reimburse, and can we increase that from what's currently allowed?
[4:46:31] Five days of absence can be reimbursed anyway.
[4:46:34] Can we increase that?
[4:46:38] The long story short is that the whole budget ends up being $343
[4:46:42] million again for fiscal year '27, just as it was in
[4:46:46] fiscal year '26. But
[4:46:49] the usage of this program has gone up.
[4:46:52] So we're going to have to watch carefully how the money's going out,
[4:46:56] and we may have to take some steps to
[4:47:00] modify the rates that are being paid to all the providers.
[4:47:05] And the budget language also contains a clause that says
[4:47:08] DESE is to conduct a stakeholder group to determine
[4:47:12] how enhancements and other reimbursements can be determined in the future.
[4:47:16] So essentially, childcare subsidy stays similar to
[4:47:20] what it is currently, but we'll have to watch the budget because we could pretty
[4:47:23] easily run our budget in this area.
[4:47:27] Missouri Quality Pre-K, there's two lanes here.
[4:47:30] You have one version of this, one lane goes to
[4:47:34] childcare providers that are not schools, and
[4:47:38] that grant program was reduced by $11 million, which is
[4:47:42] essentially the amount of money that wasn't being used.
[4:47:46] There was an appropriation higher than usage, so that was reduced by
[4:47:50] $11 million. The other side, the pre-K
[4:47:53] program administered by schools, local education
[4:47:57] agencies, it was reduced by $20 million.
[4:48:00] And there really wasn't any lapse in this area.
[4:48:02] So, a $20 million reduction means that
[4:48:06] schools will need to find different ways to fund
[4:48:10] their programs in this area, or perhaps
[4:48:14] serve fewer children, or
[4:48:18] work up some kind of a situation where they can actually require parents
[4:48:22] to pay, perhaps on a sliding scale, to keep their kids
[4:48:26] in the school-sponsored pre-K.
[4:48:28] So, that grant program did change.
[4:48:32] Career Ladder, again, the program that supports teacher salaries,
[4:48:36] for extra dollars for teachers. Funding's set at $52.5 million.
[4:48:40] That should allow us to fund at the same level that we did last year.
[4:48:45] Teacher recruitment and retention.
[4:48:47] There's actually statute that says there should be so much
[4:48:51] money available every year, and it gives a specific amount per
[4:48:55] year that's supposed to be made available for teacher scholarships to get new
[4:48:58] teachers,
[4:48:59] and that had been underfunded. The funding actually was increased from
[4:49:03] $800,000 to $1.6 million, which is a step in the right
[4:49:07] direction for sure, although I think we're still behind what statute
[4:49:10] specifies. But we will be providing more scholarships to students pursuing
[4:49:14] degrees in education.
[4:49:18] Dr. Katnik's programs, Missouri Leadership Development, Missouri Teacher
[4:49:22] Development,
[4:49:24] are still whole.
[4:49:29] Their core funding was restored. It was out for a minute,
[4:49:33] I think in the House version maybe, but it did come back.
[4:49:37] There is
[4:49:38] still funding for letters and literacy coaches.
[4:49:42] I've already mentioned the
[4:49:45] Imagination Library.
[4:49:47] Okay.
[4:49:48] Yep. Mm-hmm.
[4:49:50] Sure, go ahead.
[4:49:51] On the Success Ready Student Assessment-
[4:49:53] Yes
[4:49:54] ... so I know the funding was removed for that.
[4:49:58] The small scale pilot
[4:50:00] took place earlier this calendar year-
[4:50:03] Right
[4:50:03] ... with plans to build that out or
[4:50:07] expand the pilot. So what happens
[4:50:10] to
[4:50:13] that now? Does it just go away?
[4:50:15] My understanding is that that program would be,
[4:50:19] pick your term,
[4:50:21] put on hold, paused,
[4:50:24] stopped, either temporarily or perhaps permanently.
[4:50:28] So the timeline that we saw
[4:50:31] presented where it talked about, I think it was a few months ago, where it talked
[4:50:34] about the,
[4:50:36] I can't remember how many students it was, but a small sample, and then it was
[4:50:39] going to expand over the-
[4:50:40] Expand this year. Right
[4:50:42] ... couple of years. So it's basically just on hold.
[4:50:46] That-
[4:50:46] I'd want to confirm that, but my understanding is that, yes, that program is
[4:50:50] essentially on hold, and we're not planning to
[4:50:53] proceed with a bigger pilot during current year.
[4:50:57] Thank you.
[4:50:57] Commissioner.
[4:50:59] Okay.
[4:51:01] Voc Rehab, their core funding was approved, and their request for $15 million
[4:51:05] was also approved. Those are largely federal funds.
[4:51:08] And all told,
[4:51:10] DESE staffing had a net reduction of just
[4:51:14] over 12 FTE. A lot of those had been vacant, or
[4:51:18] there's one or two that we hadn't filled because the money, the program had not
[4:51:21] taken off, hadn't been put into place.
[4:51:24] There was a plus two
[4:51:27] FTE for the Missouri Charter School Commission to
[4:51:31] help expand charter schools.
[4:51:33] And again, my last note is that
[4:51:36] this information is prior to signature by the governor,
[4:51:40] so it's still subject to change. He has latitude to do some vetoes, including line
[4:51:44] item vetoes. We would expect the governor to sign the budget bill
[4:51:48] sometime before the end of this month.
[4:51:50] And
[4:51:52] as far as the exact funding projections, I mentioned paying
[4:51:56] schools at, we hope, $6,900 next
[4:52:00] year. That could fluctuate depending on what we get in updated
[4:52:03] information on student enrollment and other factors that play in.
[4:52:07] Are there more free or reduced lunch students?
[4:52:09] Because that is a weight on the formula. Are there more special ed students?
[4:52:13] That's an extra weight in the formula.
[4:52:15] But that's where we're at today. And that leads me into the third part of our
[4:52:19] talk, and it's very short, and that is each
[4:52:23] year,
[4:52:24] the budget the governor signs
[4:52:27] to go into effect on July 1st becomes the starting point
[4:52:31] for
[4:52:32] building the fiscal year '28 budget.
[4:52:35] So '27, which the legislature just passed, and is awaiting the signature
[4:52:39] by the governor, will be the core funding, the
[4:52:43] baseline that we start with for fiscal year '28.
[4:52:48] So during July,
[4:52:50] Rebecca Jackson here, our chief budget officer, is going to be extremely busy, and
[4:52:54] I'll be working with her, and she already has meetings set up with,
[4:52:58] I believe, all the offices.
[4:53:00] Right.
[4:53:00] And you'll be reviewing their current budget and their budget requests for
[4:53:05] the next year and assembling those.
[4:53:07] Do you want to talk about that process for a moment?
[4:53:10] Especially since I'm brand new to DESE,
[4:53:14] and my team is... I have one person that moved
[4:53:18] from areas. She moved from procurement into budget, so she knows DESE,
[4:53:22] but she doesn't know budget. So we're all new.
[4:53:25] We're going to meet with all the programs and all the executive leadership,
[4:53:29] find out about their programs, find out what their needs are, what they think that
[4:53:32] they need as far as new decision items,
[4:53:35] if they think that they'll need a supplemental for '27.
[4:53:38] And then those are the items that we'll bring forward to you all after discussion
[4:53:42] with the commissioner and Kyle. They'll prioritize,
[4:53:46] bring those items to you, and then you guys will decide what we want to bring
[4:53:49] forward with the budget.
[4:53:51] And, uh, Carrie Casey and John Otto as Finance Committee,
[4:53:55] uh, again, are planning to be heavily involved
[4:53:59] in the budget process for fiscal year '28
[4:54:02] and talk about, okay, do we actually include
[4:54:06] all the things that are in the '27 budget as we
[4:54:10] roll into '28? Or what's the appropriate, um, move
[4:54:14] to modify or continue? And,
[4:54:18] again, the budget itself,
[4:54:21] when you read House Bill 2,
[4:54:24] it's very prescriptive about what each line item does
[4:54:28] and how much money, and the amounts of dollars
[4:54:32] are almost exclusively from a calculated amount or from a
[4:54:36] fiscal note, and that is when the legislature was passing a
[4:54:40] bill, they would ask us,
[4:54:42] "How much is this going to cost?"
[4:54:44] And we would have to perform calculations about, this many
[4:54:48] FTE and this expense, and the fiscal note
[4:54:52] ends up being the dollar amount that's in the budget, is how it usually works.
[4:54:55] But we will need to talk about how the board wants to proceed and the questions
[4:54:59] that Mr. Matusik brought up in terms of, we know it's a tight budget year,
[4:55:03] so what do we do?
[4:55:04] Uh, we'll need to talk about the fact that
[4:55:09] assuming the governor signs the bill, the current bill as is,
[4:55:13] there's one-time money in there supporting the formula.
[4:55:16] I mentioned from the Blind Pension Fund and the Capital Commission Fund, that's one
[4:55:20] time. So- There's a- I'm sorry?
[4:55:24] There's a bump of $190 million. Yeah.
[4:55:25] There's also the $190 million that was not
[4:55:29] appropriated that won't go away. It'll still be a shortfall of the
[4:55:33] formula for next year. So between the $190 million the formula called
[4:55:37] for for next year that we are not going to receive, and then the
[4:55:41] $118 million that has been at least partially filled by one-time
[4:55:45] money, there could be a substantial shortfall
[4:55:48] between what the formula calculates and what the
[4:55:52] core budget amount is in the
[4:55:56] fiscal year '28, which means we would need a fairly
[4:56:00] sizable new decision item, a request for additional
[4:56:03] money to move towards full funding of the formula.
[4:56:07] So those will be big decisions the board has on the horizon, and we'll certainly
[4:56:11] try to provide you all the information you need going forward to go make good
[4:56:14] decisions and, uh, guide the department.
[4:56:17] But I'd be glad to answer any questions this time.
[4:56:21] Mr. Matusik.
[4:56:22] Uh, thank you, Kyle. Uh,
[4:56:26] when the state adequacy
[4:56:30] target isn't met, right, so if it's $6,900, just simple
[4:56:34] math, $200 less.
[4:56:38] You know, if you take a small rural district-
[4:56:41] Right
[4:56:42] ... with 100 students, you know, that's $20,000.
[4:56:45] You take
[4:56:46] a suburban district with, say, 4,000
[4:56:50] students, you know, that's what 800,000 or...
[4:56:53] I think like Park Hill in the Kansas City area has over 10,000 students, so
[4:56:57] that's a couple million dollars. Um, I'm less familiar with
[4:57:01] Kansas City, how many students they have and, but
[4:57:06] are there districts that
[4:57:09] can weather that better than others?
[4:57:11] Does it hurt rural districts more?
[4:57:13] Does it hurt-
[4:57:15] Yeah
[4:57:15] ... or do they all feel the similar pain?
[4:57:17] Do you care if I go off in the weeds here a little bit to explain that question
[4:57:20] properly?
[4:57:21] Yeah.
[4:57:21] Okay.
[4:57:22] First off, um, the ability to weather these
[4:57:26] situations,
[4:57:28] it's going to vary dramatically district to district,
[4:57:32] and
[4:57:33] there's two parts to that. Number one,
[4:57:36] how heavily does that district depend on local funding, property
[4:57:40] tax funding, versus how heavily does that district depend
[4:57:44] on formula funding? We have schools we refer to
[4:57:47] as formula-dependent schools because they get a
[4:57:51] majority of their dollars through the state formula, and those
[4:57:54] districts will generally take a bigger hit if the
[4:57:58] formula's underfunded. The way the formula's set up,
[4:58:02] it's not that we send $6,900 to every district for every
[4:58:06] kid.
[4:58:07] It's set up that that's the target that we're supposed to have behind each
[4:58:11] kid through a combination of state dollars stacked on top
[4:58:15] of local dollars. The formula essentially calculates how
[4:58:19] many local dollars a community should be able to
[4:58:23] supply per kid,
[4:58:25] and then the state makes up the difference.
[4:58:27] So if you're from Koshkonong, you know, if you've been there,
[4:58:31] it's Oregon, Howell R-3 down south central Missouri, there's essentially
[4:58:35] no industry. And it's a very nice community, but it's all
[4:58:39] agricultural land and property tax, um, revenue
[4:58:43] is at a very much lesser
[4:58:46] level than, say, in Ladue. And so
[4:58:50] Oregon, Howell R-3 would be considered probably a formula-dependent
[4:58:54] school, and it's more difficult for them because the state
[4:58:58] money gets hit, then they take the hit.
[4:59:02] A district like Ladue, um, they don't receive very much state
[4:59:06] money actually per student, and that's because their local property,
[4:59:10] um,
[4:59:11] revenue is significantly higher.
[4:59:15] So their reduction in state dollars may not be
[4:59:19] as significant as it is for other districts throughout the state.
[4:59:22] And then there are some districts
[4:59:24] that we refer to as hold harmless districts.
[4:59:29] When this formula was passed back in '04 or '05,
[4:59:33] um,
[4:59:34] you know, no legislator wants to see their school district get less,
[4:59:38] and the formula currently in place would've given less
[4:59:42] to some districts than the previous formula.
[4:59:46] So the compromise was that those districts would continue
[4:59:50] receiving what they had been receiving. They were considered hold harmless.
[4:59:54] And when we have a shortfall in the formula
[4:59:59] What we have to do is dial down the state adequacy target,
[5:00:03] 7,145, to the number that fits the budget, in
[5:00:07] this case, around 6,900. And that becomes the amount
[5:00:11] that's the target for each kid to have behind them.
[5:00:15] And then we start sending state formula money out.
[5:00:18] We're required to pay the hold harmless schools their full amount first
[5:00:23] because they've not been receiving additional from this formula.
[5:00:26] And then the shortfall
[5:00:28] ends up falling upon the formula-dependent schools more
[5:00:32] heavily.
[5:00:33] I don't know if that answered your question or not, but the schools I was at, one
[5:00:37] district received about $3,300 per student from the formula.
[5:00:41] One district, a poorer district, received about $4,400 per
[5:00:45] kid. There's one district in the St.
[5:00:47] Louis area that receives $584 per kid, and it's all
[5:00:50] about the combination of what their community can
[5:00:54] provide in local property tax revenue because the
[5:00:58] values of their property is in their tax rate, and what it takes to get
[5:01:02] to the SAT.
[5:01:04] Thank you.
[5:01:07] Any other questions?
[5:01:09] Okay. We'll be working on the formula on the budget, and we will try to
[5:01:13] keep you as well informed as we can. But I thank you for your time and attention.
[5:01:17] Thank you.
[5:01:17] Thank you.
[5:01:23] Very well. So at this time, we have the commissioner search
[5:01:27] update with Ms. Casey.
[5:01:31] Thank you, President Miller. I have a brief update
[5:01:35] today to share with the board,
[5:01:38] that with the completion of the interim commissioner being
[5:01:42] now on board, the state board is focused on conducting a national
[5:01:46] search for a commissioner. And we are working with internal teams
[5:01:50] between HR, procurement, and OA to sort through what is the
[5:01:53] process that we're required to follow.
[5:01:56] We're identifying potential search firms, and we'll be
[5:02:00] doing an evaluation of those firms to determine the best.
[5:02:05] This search process will involve ultimately working with a national
[5:02:09] search firm, and
[5:02:11] we're
[5:02:15] working on this regularly, and we'll continue to provide updates in future board
[5:02:18] meetings.
[5:02:20] Okay.
[5:02:21] That's it. Thank you.
[5:02:21] Any questions for Ms. Casey?
[5:02:25] Hearing none.
[5:02:27] Mr. Otto had a request.
[5:02:30] Yeah, I just had one comment before we go into closed session.
[5:02:33] I know that Commissioner
[5:02:36] Westbrooks-Hodge's term ends
[5:02:39] June 30th, and so I don't know if this is your last meeting or not, but I
[5:02:43] wanted to recognize and thank you for your service while you're
[5:02:46] here, just in case you weren't here at a future meeting. Thank you. Thank you.
[5:02:50] Thanks.
[5:02:52] Kind of a relatively awkward situation, and so please-
[5:02:57] But I wanted to make sure that you-
[5:02:58] We're not trying to push you out the door
[5:03:02] by any means. Yeah. But hopefully, we'll get that resolved
[5:03:06] relatively soon.
[5:03:08] But you are very much appreciated.
[5:03:10] Thank you.
[5:03:11] Certainly.
[5:03:12] Thank you both.
[5:03:13] At this time, we need to move into closed session.
[5:03:17] All right. I move that the State Board of Education go into closed session
[5:03:21] as posted by the executive assistant to consider the following:
[5:03:25] legal actions, causes of action, litigation, or legal work product relating
[5:03:29] to the State Board of Education and the Department of Elementary and Secondary
[5:03:32] Education, as well as any confidential or privileged communications
[5:03:36] between those entities and legal counsel.
[5:03:39] Two, individually identifiable personnel records,
[5:03:43] performance ratings, or records pertaining to employees or applicants for
[5:03:46] employment. And three, criminal records imposed by law.
[5:03:51] Second.
[5:03:53] All those in favor of closed session?
[5:03:54] We have to do a roll call of this.
[5:03:55] Okay.
[5:03:57] Mr. Bradberry?
[5:03:59] Yes.
[5:04:00] Ms. Casey?
[5:04:01] Yes.
[5:04:01] Mr. Matusik?
[5:04:03] Yes.
[5:04:03] Mr. Myers?
[5:04:04] Yes.
[5:04:05] Mr. Otto?
[5:04:06] Yes.
[5:04:06] Dr. Scholl?
[5:04:07] Yes.
[5:04:07] Ms. Westbrooks-Hodge?
[5:04:08] Yes.
[5:04:09] President Miller?
[5:04:10] Yes.
[5:04:12] I
[5:04:14] want a quick little point of order.
[5:04:20] So I was kind of waiting for the
[5:04:24] opportunity to
[5:04:27] bring this up, but in our bylaws,
[5:04:30] and it's sort of half joking, but half serious, too.
[5:04:35] It says, "Voting. Votes by the board are taken by voice
[5:04:39] unless a roll call vote is required by law.
[5:04:42] When the vote is not unanimous, a roll call vote is taken in alphabetical order.
[5:04:46] All action items before the board must be approved." So
[5:04:49] it's the alphabetical thing.
[5:04:51] I think, Brooks,
[5:04:53] you go after me, not last.
[5:04:56] I'm just like, "You're such a geek."
[5:05:01] But for the new board members, I will say,
[5:05:05] when we developed these bylaws,
[5:05:09] because we didn't have any before, I think they were-