August 19, 2024 School Board Meeting

001e e e like to call to order our August 19th 2024 board meeting I apologize for that very loud bang uh do I have a motion to approve the agenda Mr Hogan make a motion to approve the agenda do I have a second Miss snip seconded any discussion I have a motion um I move that we amend the agenda to add the discussion for uh the new policy for Proviso 1. one20 student physical safety before number 16 on tonight's discussion agenda second all right that motion's been made and seconded to amend the agenda to add discussion of a new policy for Proviso 1. one20 student physical safety before number 16 Proviso 1.1 120 is that the bathroom one yes okay um go ahead you have um just it was stated by the superintendent you know

002that we needed to have these things um you know be addressed by school boards and I think it's been like kind of over a month um and so just I think that with all the discussion that we have regarding policy for tonight in general I think it would be um just good to add it to the discussion I think it's been asked to be added on previously but I don't see why we can't go ahead and discuss it tonight right uh Mr saterfield yeah um I know that there's a lot to discuss and I know that was going to be a very lengthy discussion I'm sure um uh I'm sure there are a lot of opinions uh regarding that Dr Ross are we having any issues regarding that uh no sir um we have uh

003there have been I believe 11 new laws that have been passed we have to take up all of these policies it was our discussion not to do them all at one night so we're all going to take up this the administration doesn't have any any discussion points for tonight uh but we have a plan to take take up uh it would be my opinion if we can take up those provisors that directly related to budgeting issues so that's the cell phone and also um what we have to discuss tonight which is keec yeah and and Miss bar I'm not opposed to having the discuss I just think there's an awful lot on our plate and I think that looking at least when I was studying my notes going through preparing for tonight's meeting so uh

004we could be here till midnight I think um so I maybe we could put it on the docket for the next meeting or one of the up and cominging meetings right I well I will say um that the agenda tonight is very heavy on policy it was requested by the administration to talk about several different policies um and some of these policies in order for everyone to have a full discussion will take a long time um and we and for purposes of how late the meeting goes I mean that we I mean these are pretty um these conversations everybody has opinions on them we wanted to make sure that we had enough time where people weren't getting tired of tired uh you know discussing these the policy that you're talking about um specifically there was

005a lot of there's been a lot of conversation about um I've had many conversations with lots you know different people definitely with what the School Board Association put out um and talking to other elected officials at the state level about that and trying to get some clarification on and we've also just had a supreme court opinion come out this week since the last board officer meeting so things have been kind of fluid with that and before we have that conversation just to have it as a talking political point I wanted to kind of give it a little bit of time and Dr Ross had mentioned that these policies are talking about tonight you know tie into funding and there are several of them that will probably take a while so it just didn't make it

006onto this agenda uh it is absolutely going to be addressed it's not something that we're trying not to put on the agenda um but luckily we don't have a policy like the Schoolboard Association policy which would make it a very urgent matter um our policy it has some language that probably needs to be tightened up but it's not overly Broad in my opinion um that would make it a pressing priority that's just my thoughts I don't know um Mr Hogan with if and from what I'm hearing Dr Ross it doesn't sound like the Administration has really anything kind of teed up to to have a conversation on this topic tonight uh yes sir this is kind of evolving I'm checking my email right now at 223 p.m. today we received an email from the South

007Carolina School boards Association regarding uh this policy and um its changes so and that just defends the School Board Association I mean they're just defending their policy I don't really think that that I mean their policy is not does not have to be adapted I mean they made it very clear at the school board of conf conference that um that it didn't need to be adapted because it upset several school board members including myself um so I'm just saying that to say I would like to include all the information for our discussion right I agree Miss huddle um I'm concerned that we're delaying it unnecessarily when we're not really waiting on anything we've got a letter from the Department of Education dated July 23rd instructing us to do this and telling us that they're charged

008with taking 25% of our operating revenue and that we were supposed to do this before school started back um and so that that really concerns me um we discussed it or the superintendent presented this at our last school board meeting and that night I asked for it to be on the agenda and we're putting other policies in front of it for tonight the KE which we do have a temporary policy in place for that because we put the state's regulation out there and and we don't have anything for this and I'm concerned that we're not following the department of Ed's instructions and we're jeopardizing our fund Department of Education is aware of our agenda okay well that may be but I mean then we need open discussion as to why we're not talking about it

009we just did well okay well nobody gave me a reason I sent an agenda request asking for it and all I got back was we're not going to talk about it so then I asked why what are we waiting on and I think that's a legitimate question okay I think we just had that discussion and I I would like to put this in the minutes go for it Miss uh Mr saterfield yeah again I don't think anybody doesn't think it's an important issue but prior to board meetings I really study my notes I study my book I try to read up and what's going on uh with the School Board Association and all the emails and all the information that we're getting to prepare so I can have an educated release as far as I

010can the best I can do a discussion and understand why I'm discussion I this was not on the agenda and I am not prepared I don't feel like I'm properly prepared right if I know it's coming up I will prepare myself so I can uh make some reasonable suggestions or give some sort of input that it where I'm aware of what we're does that make sense I'm just don't feel like I'm prepared I understand it's important and and I give you know I I give full Credence to that I'm just not prepared to discuss it so I really wouldn't be able to offer as a board member I would not be able to offer anything pertinent to that so okay so this is a motion to amend the agenda and I will say we have

011a meeting starting at at at s and we still have to go into executive session so um yeah last comment and then Mr Scully I was goingon to say call the question but go ahead I guess Dr Ross kind of to go back to my original question I don't I don't necessarily think you guys are prepared to have this discussion tonight with Mr ffield I don't think he's prepared if it was not to be discussed tonight when could we expect it to be on the agenda for discussion is there I mean is there an expectation of I mean we can put it on the next meeting I have no problem to be on the next meeting right I mean as long as we W have 500 things going to where we have an 11 o'clock

012meeting then I mean I have no problem the conversation to even put this on the agenda has taken so long that's kind of what we were talking about trying to put all of the other policies there were more policies on the draft than there are on this meeting um and they were taken out so I mean I have no problem putting that on the on the agenda for the next meeting and I just want to say too I know as we adopt our policies we have to go through two readings uh the state understands as we're going through this the reason I explained it in the superintendent's report a month ago is to show you what the practices are now but we don't want to make bad policy I think we need to take into

013consideration the information we have three uh provisors or laws that are jeopardizing our funding and teachers and administrators are very nervous about these and so I think if we take that time we have cell phones and uh restrooms and instructional materials all on the next meeting um but we're waiting for guidance and I think when we get that we have four days to prepare for tonight and we just want to be able to answer questions and speak intelligently about these changes so can we be assured that it will be on the agenda for next meeting as long as we don't have like something crazy come up where we would have a super I'm not going to I'm not first of all I don't make the agenda I mean and we talk about this and they're

014open as long as there's not like something crazy that comes up and we have a a manageable meeting or agenda discussion agenda I have no problem with that but we have several really big conversations to start tonight and putting that on there is I mean there's a lot of priority different people have different priorities and um and all of them are important and they're all very important to the state department right now I'm very I think we're all very much aware of that um I'm going to call the question this needs a two3 vote um to change the agenda but um I'll call for the question all in favor of Miss barnhart's motion all opposed all right that motion um fails 5-2 that mes us to our original U motion to approve the agenda um

015all in favor to approve the agenda all opposed the motion carries 6 to one and do I have a motion to enter executive session Mr Hogan i' like to make a motion to enter executive session to consider the following a selected employment items exhibit a FR action B selected employment items exhibit B information only C contractual matter regarding professional development services Exhibit C and D contractual matter regarding financial advisor and exhib do have a second Miss snip seconded uh any discussion seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor uh that's six or seven that motion carries seven to Z and we will adjourn for executive session and convene reconvene at 700 p.m. e e e so Miss knives was making sure we started at seven on the dot I'd like to call our

016meeting to order and welcome everyone here it looks like we have a great crowd here tonight um and it looks like we're going to recognize some really special D5 students I'm excited for that uh we are going to start off tonight with our invocation and our Pledge of Allegiance with uh Mr Kevin Scully Mr Scully okay thank you uh let us pray in the name of the father Son and Holy Spirit Heavenly Father we praise you and give you thanks we thank you for our children we thank you for the gift of education and the opportunities that a new year brings we thank you for iro little league and their volunteers coaches and athletes we thank you for all those who serve our district the teachers support staff security teams bus drivers coaches and administrators

017and pray they receive your wish wisdom and guidance as they navigate the start of the new year and work to serve the needs of all our children please be with all who are suffering we ask you to hear their silent and unspoken prayers we pray for peace and that all that we all feel your Everlasting Love we ask these things in the name of the father son holy spirit amen all right thank you for that and that brings us to number eight on our agenda our school board Spotlight Miss Taylor thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Ross good evening and happy back to school it is so great having a room full of students here with us after after the summer so um I'll be very excited to introduce them in just

018a moment but before we do that um we are going to recognize a few of you for the um 2324 boardmy Institute I'm sure you know but for the benefit of everyone else this is a yearr round training curriculum focused on leadership skills for board members on State and National educ ation issues so um this year we um offer congratulations to Mrs Blackburn Hines on achieving level three Mr saterfield and Mr Scully for achieving level two and Mrs Snipes for achieving level one recognition this year so if y'all want to come forward we'll do a photo no no photo yes photo come on we'll do it [Applause] and then if the other members and Dr Ross would like to join us up front as well it did so um as Mr Scully mentioned in his

019prayer tonight we are honoring two teams from hermo Little League both of these teams Advanced to the World Series level of Allstar competition and both finished as Championship Runners up both teams played hard they played fair and they made us all Proud by representing their schools and communities so well so tonight we would like to congratulate um both of those and we will start with the senior softball team so when I call your name ladies come you know what to do Haley Alderman Ali Bickley een [Applause] Davis Reagan Haggard Katie Grace Hill Olivia Hill Stephanie Jones Bridget Keane Lila [Applause] Peppers brenley pet McKenna Rymer Sammy Stevenson and then their coaches are also here with us tonight Brian Jones oh Ali Ali Gant I'm sorry Ally she did a great job pitching she's fantastic Brian

020Jones Robert peppers and Aaron Ry are the coaches [Applause] all right and now we will recognize the seniors baseball team Jake Bogan [Applause] David [Applause] Derek Felix [Applause] fletcha Coleman [Applause] frier Drew Greer Griff Harper Kaden Harris [Applause] Braden Johnson ree [Applause] Jolly Charlie Mahia Ethan offing Weston plotner Denzel posy Raleigh stalters Colby Smith Charlie Todd okay and they are joined by their coaches Pete [Applause] vanan Ethan bonan and Jason jolly [Applause] than there we go all right here we go on three one two three one two three Mom and Dad yall [Applause] good congratulations to um all of the teams that rol leag I will say just so that y'all know the little folks in our district are looking up to you I mean my daughters were watching game tracker and I didn't even

021know that they knew what that was to see both of the teams to see how they were doing so just way to be Role Models y'all seriously [Applause] all right G to give it a couple seconds to clear out I feel like the party just left the board meeting me apologize for that all right so um that brings us to number nine the superintendent report and I'll turn it over to Dr Ross thank you madam chair members of the board and our community it is a certainly honor to recognize our students we know that uh during the summer months there's so much that they're engaged in whether Arts Athletics academics or just enrichment through Service uh but this is an example of just one of those activities also thanks to the parents for the uh

022all of the the travel and the uh support and the hours that are spent to support our students in their extracurricular activities we're certainly proud of that uh at this time I wanted to highlight our theme for the 2024 25 school year and it's growing together uh as indicated by our flower pot that our op our operations team put together and we had a great time at our kickoff uh really celebrating working together growing together uh recognizing the importance of of our faculty and staff moving forward towards our vision and Mission uh we are a system operating by three critical questions uh the first one is why do we do this our vision our second one is how do we accomplish our vision our mission and then the third is what are our outcomes our

023vision is that we love and grow our students our mission is that we're focused on academic social emotional growth and development and our student our strategic plan outcomes identified by the 24 strategies that we're working on each and every day with our our faculty and staff so we're really EXC excited about celebrating these uh we have uh additional to the 24 we have three administrative priorities that we're working on classroom supports uh for students and teachers teacher retention and recruitment plans and ensuring a safe and productive learning environment for all of our students and when we think about classroom supports as you saw SC ready scores uh have been have been unemaro and released and we'll bring to you uh in a future meeting breakdowns of that data uh but we always report these red

024bars and blue bars throughout the year the progress of our students on map or measures of academic progress and our goal is to ex extend the amount of students that are on grade level uh we look at um the number in terms of raw data you can see that at the end of the school year we had 2,300 students uh that were not on grade level in math and we saw um how that manifested Statewide we had 2100 students in that were not on great level in in ela and so while we're making gains our goal is to uh deliver an individualized learning uh program in a mass education system some of our challenges to that if we look at poverty's impact on on performance we know that it's not causal but it's correlated and

025uh looking at a median level poverty School in our school district uh just putting a um we call Middle Road or average uh class of performance um there was a class of 21 seats that We examined now when we look at number of seats the desk may be the same but the students are different so when we look at our enrollment and how we break down our classes by class size when we looked at one class in particular uh we found that there were in this 21 students there were nine different I'm sorry eight different performance levels in terms of reading uh levels when you look at the number of students in terms of their achievement you see a even more challenging issue that that teacher has before them right now that of the eight

026different reading levels uh 86% of those students are below the grade level and so when they walk in uh they're at of potentially five different achievement bands this particular classroom has four for six students of the 21 that are below the 21st percentile uh all of those students are going to be held accountable to getting up to the 61st percentile or meets that is a huge challenge for our teachers and they they're going to need support in addition to that uh they also have the added responsibilities of IEPs and 504s and um behavior intervention plans students who don't speak English attendance plans and also addressing the mental health and emotional supports for discipline uh the recent study uh presented by Ed week said that of the 53h hour that teachers spend in a week working

027less than half of that is spent in teaching and so for us our challenge ahead of us is providing these teachers and the students supports in the classroom as we think about our teachers um we need to understand that our teachers are are retiring and there's a new generation of teachers that are moving into our classrooms uh baby boomers United States are retiring at 10,000 today Our Generation Z teachers they'll be eligible for Social Security in 2027 so as we lose our teachers the teachers who were teaching us understand that our schools and the future of our schools depend on the millennial and Generation Z teachers not only recruiting them to the uh to the profession but also supporting them so that they can be successful our teachers have told us what allows them to

028be successful and what they seek through uh almost two years now discussing um a value proposition for for our employees they said two things I want to be in a place where I I feel valued and I am growing we actually measured uh the extent of being value uh while there was not one particular value or appreciation that all of our teachers had uh but when we looked at our teachers in our faculty advisory representing all the teachers of the year across all of our schools what we find is that words of affirmation acknowledging the experiences and the contributions of the professionals is extremely important and so as our goal is that we bring things from this board that we're acknowledging the actual experiences and the contributions of those professionals quality time to reflect on

029their practice and plan instruction and supports acts of service things that would help um Aid and enlighten the the burden in teaching and learning uh we also have before um as our goal to fix and fi plan to address the facility and enrollment conditions to ensure safe and productive learning environment for all of our students uh so we have been uh placing the facility issues and the capacity issues before the community uh that information is available on our website uh and so the information is available for our community to see what we are put before the public on November the 5th and so our goal is looking at safe and productive schools our future um the student future is different from our past and it's our goal to provide them uh with all that they

030need so that when we look at the question are our students prepared for their Futures uh the answer is yes uh so with that uh we'll proceed to our June Financial updates and so I'll call our CFO Miss Heather Tucker to the Lector for the June financials uh Madam chair members of the board I present our June uh monthly financials as of the period ending June 30th um our first slide here is our Revenue ending June 30th um we have received we're right line with where we were in the end of 2023 with receiving 102% of our expected revenues um and as far as our expenditures same thing we are right in line with where we were at the end of 2023 um receiving right at 100% 100.4 49% of our uh expending 10.49% of

031our expenditures now I will call to your attention that this is not our yearend financials this is just as of June 30th so we are still working through our year-end procedures but um um these are our financials as of June 30th do I have any questions no questions we'll proceed with Esser all right and next up we have our quarterly Esser update um as you all know Esser began in 20 Esser 3 began in 2022 um we have here our uh Sr one which is our cares act um that ended as of June 30th 2021 and we expended all of those funds um sr2 we have a remaining balance of $1,878 um this is money that we cannot spend this is what was left on the table as of sr2 um it was all related

032to things that we had ordered that didn't come in in time and so we did leave a little bit on the table there um but for sr3 as of June 30th we had $1.45 million remaining but I can tell you that as of today we have a plan to spend that and we have been working towards getting that money down as of today we have a remaining balance of 875,000 th000 in addressing learning loss um which is uh will be reduced in our next payroll the payroll for 831 um and we have a plan to spend every penny of that as our funds to make sure that we are um taking advantage of everything that we have from the federal government um the amendments are due on September 16th and we will um assure that

033we have every one of these pennies pen pennies spent any questions on Esser Miss huddle um we heard some reports with getting back to school of some hvac's that was not working and I'm sure some of that's just you know repairs but um is any of this $800,000 you said 200,000 for learning loss is any of that going to be for HVAC I am not 100% sure miss H and I can get back with you on that um I do not believe it is um the majority of that is addressing learning loss we have a remaining balance of 637 th000 um and that is to address needs specifically with our students um for things like summer planning it was um summer reading camps and so the majority of that is going to be spent in

034this next payroll and and we do have a plan to reduce that last bit um that we've been working with with Miss m School in her office so um I do not believe that any of that is for hbac but I can get a definite answer for you any Mr saterfield yeah just because my hearing is not so good and I don't think your microphone is loud enough um I'm sure it's not my hearing um uh you said it has to be we have till September 30th we have September 30th to spend that money we have until the end of the year to receive those items so we can place the orders as long as we have the orders placed and the um the invoices cut by September 30th um we would like to receive

035those items um in November because we have till the end of December to receive pay and finish our reports for this so when you say the end of the year you don't mean the like January one end no the end of the federal fiscal year so yeah Dr Ross do we I know we haven't heard from Julius in a while are there things on his plate that uh so a lot of that incorporating in summer learning laws um that we can we and that's kind of how we've hugely supported our our summer reading projects or after school projects through that I think one of the issues we ran to if you look at S2 that $1800 is you have to get it we can order it in time but the deliver has to be there

036in time and so if you go with things that are in back order then we we end up missing so our goal is to get those to things that we can EXP been uh we won't have any backat issues and we can get those all accounted for uh before those deadlines hit and we have a backup plan for if our initial plan doesn't work we have a backup plan of what we can do um and it's is if we need to if we need to Pivot to that we have till September 16th to submit an amendment to the federal government to say we're going to do something different than what we' originally planned and it's all based on the surveys that went out um to the public with the Esser funds so we will be

037keeping with that same plan um just pivoting on what we can get in time miss barnhard this might be for Dr Ross but what you just said about um like if you have something ordered invoiced and everything by September 30th and just for some reason unforeseen to anybody it doesn't come in by you said December or what is what's the plan how does that work so that's our that's our backup plan is we want to make sure that if we place any orders before September 30th that we have a guaranteed delivery date that we know that that is in stock it's not something that's going to be backordered um part of our backup plan is um Chromebooks because that's something know something that we can we can do um so if we had to to

038Pivot that that is kind of our backup plan because we know we can get those and have them delivered and not run into any issues of back orders or delivery um issues so anyone else all right thank you Miss deser speaking of capital we'll have our chief of sry director of operations Mr Dave wisman come forth and uh give us an update on our 2023 2024 Capital update good evening Madame chairman members of the board Dr Ross members of the community thank you for allowing me some time to speak about the 2324 capital projects um this was the approved budget $15 million for the 232 24 capital projects there's a list of things that we identified at that time that we wanted to address uh you'll see the second column talks about the expenditures of

039what we spend or what we have already encumbered and the remaining balance the two that stand out with me uh are our two roofing issues at H Corley and River Springs and Allan if you could step forward I just want to talk a little bit about that I think it's the next slide uh we had a company come in and do infrared on those two roofs uh because our concern is making sure we understand what we have to deal with uh we looked at the original budget for capital projects to rip the roof off and replace it was going to cost more than what we had to budget for just that's just because we didn't understand what what everything that needed to be done or at least I didn't so we wanted to go in

040with a different type of project that product that we're looking at that can fix the problems and those two roof and still keep it within budget I mentioned a couple times at some point we may have to come back for some additional funding but I think based on our original planning that we should be able to meet these two projects into uh under budget or within the budget that we allocated the good thing about the new system it doesn't require us to have the kids out of the school in order to start replacing some of that so I just let you talk about the infrared and the the program itself so as you can see right here um several months ago we uh engaged with one of our vendors to uh do some um infrared

041studies on roofs and as far as I know the the district has never really um went this um I guess utilized a method like this to to find actual leaks so what this right here does it helps us find the um where the actual leak is in the building versus just having a roof up there and just say hey look at this roof and try to help us find you know where's the water coming into the building some roof can do that then then they can do a pretty good job but when you have an older roof at times it's a little harder to do that so we get a little a little bit more surgical by going this route um we're able to see the wet insulation and it helps us really get pinpoint

042where the actual leak is at using the thermal imaging it's a pretty neat way of finding where the leak's at so um we went ahead and had um um River Springs and H Corley we had their roofs um scanned and um it came back and and we found the problematic spots and here in these two spot these two areas you can see the the spots where you'll see um the I guess it's the the lighter blue areas and that's the areas that that's that's holding water so um that kind of helps us drive to the point to where hey this this is the area that's I guess the where the insulation actually wet beneath um the waterproofing membrane so some of the other things projects that we've worked on uh and we've completed the arml

043high school practice field lights they were installed over the summer actually turned on uh the other day for the first time in use we also had budgeted for the Dutch Fork practice field we ran into a little problem because as you dig in Dutch Fork you end up with a lot of rock so we had to go back out and do get an additional quote so we can go in there and dig further make sure that we got the basins for those lights in there so that it's solid but those should be done we're expecting uh by November but again heral high school has been completed uh one of the other things we talked about in addition to uh some some u a bus or GPS and cameras we started getting installing the new GPS's

044in our maintenance trucks this will allow us to just do some live tracking so we know where our uh District folks are so if we have to pull people in to a different school we can reach out and call the right people to get them who are close to that school so we know where they're at and get them into say a school that has a water leak or or U other issues that we need to address as quickly as possible uh we have completed some of the door alarms uh we completed nine schools we got nine that are in progress we've actually already put out the the quotes we should have those starting to install here sometime soon um we we went ahead and made sure that we used some of the old 1621

045Capital funds that that I'd brought to you before to make sure we can start addressing these these issues that because it's just a big expense there's a lot of doors especially on the high school area so we're making sure that we use uh our money wisely in this area and then we started using the 23 24 Capital HVAC and automations you can see there's a list of things that we spent on HVAC uh I didn't count them all but uh there are a lot of questions and concerns that we have about hfac units I was at a school today I'd never seen this type of thermostat because it doesn't have a gauge it has a red light and uh I was rather surprised how how does a teacher know what the temperature is and so

046as you can see we we've gone back in some of the schools and upgraded our thermostats or our building automation uh this just happens to be har harvesting West so I talked to Dr Turner earlier and said as we go through hopefully and are into process of remodeling that those walls and stuff that's an issue that we want to address uh if for some reason we can't address it uh with an upcoming Bond then we'll go back and look at getting that onto the list and do it internally because part of the issue is is the equipment doesn't match necessarily the thermostats because some of the equipment's been replaced some of them it's new stuff the therm stats are old so there's a there's a problem with the interchange uh but then there's also some

047of the older units that we just can't get the right pieces and parts in there to get them fixed but you can see as a as a total budget we've we spent over $956,000 this summer or this last school year replacing heating and air conditioning units and there's still a lot more to go uh we did complete the five-year master plan uh we you've all seen the reports we're still focusing on what areas number ones and number two that we can fix with the the current capital budget uh and progress on as we go through this school year depending regardless on what happens with other issues yes um on the HVAC slide um you commented that some of them have been harder to repair just because of hard to find parts and that sort of

048thing are those on like a short list to be completely replaced yes replacing the the ones that are on reparable we got a list so we we actually have a list of items that are um that are above 15 years old and some of that equipment is kind of is at the end of life point so that is on a higher priority list we do have some newer units that were kind of working through some Kinks with the manufacturer um we're just having some some issues that we're having to work um through some control issues with them so on the newer ones um that are manufacturer based issues does that mean like we're still under a warranty and they're going to replace those like what does that mean so we're actually out of warranty with

049those they were replaced within the last two or three years and we are working to see what we can do with the manufacturer to kind of make things solid um there's a conversion kit that's a couple thousand dollars that we have to have um installed on these units so as we look to replace the ones that are at in the live um that still need to be replaced are we looking at going with the different companies since some of the ones that y'all have right now are still relatively new but we're having issues but the parts aren't available yes ma'am a lot of these I think were sourced I guess during covid when it was hard to actually find equipment okay because lead times were were months if not years and you had to get

050whatever was on the shelf or whatever you could get within that certain period of time um things have gotten better they're not what they were several years ago but they have have gotten better so um we certainly want to make sure that we're staying within our district standards of equipment thank you yes ma'am kind of going off of that question um about haax and some of the schools on the list where are we with armo high school because I've gotten emails that their air conditioning isn't working and it was you know when school first started kids were going into really really hot classrooms and that there's something with maybe the gy gy and there's parts that have like so we had an issue with a man one of the manufacturers with um one with one

051of the relatively new units that were installed during Co and it was one of the units that had to have can I ask you speak a little bit louder or can we get this mic up I mean I'm struggling to hear what they're saying I'm sorry I don't know if anybody else is but Mr sder feel alluded to it okay I'm sorry I'm sorry so um to answer that question the armoa the auxiliary gym or that smaller gym that was one of the units that we are having issues with um we've already been in touch with the manufacturer we're working with the vendor that installed those units um to help us meet with the manufacturer so we can get this um that situation resolved because we have several of these throughout the district um that

052was I guess the issue with with with that with the gym that has been resolved with we I guess they the manufacturer has to develop a custom harness and it takes several days if not a week or two to build the harness and then ship it to us and then we have to install it we have to break everything down just it's very time consuming to make this repair that's the piece with the gym now overall with the school we found out we had an issue with the building automation system and that's really what that's the brains of of the system that kind of controls everything so we're working through that that's just another piece of the overall plant um are those projects included in this list or those are they not included in this

053in this list with with the high school that list was what we identified two years ago going into the 22 23 Capital these are things that broke within the last two to three weeks four weeks so they're not covered under that but we do have some some plans to get the the funding for that because we we budget enough for the 24 25 Capital to address these issues okay any other questions on this part uh Miss huddle and then miss barnhard um how long I'd have a dollar if I every time a roof leaks how long is a flat School roof supposed to last I believe it depends on the the product the the type of product I mean I and I don't mean to put you on the spot but I would really I

054mean we've got a bond referendum we may be building some new schools and you know my brain is going maybe we should stop building schools with flat roofs um but I really would like at another school board meeting to know like how long these are supposed to last and how long they're warranted by the Builder um just to make sure we're not paying to fix schools roofs at the builders and I don't I'm not saying that's the case here but I I just it bothers me that we have I mean I got a call from somebody that the roof at shap and middle school was leaking and yeah okay so anyway so so and the other question I have and Miss Barnhart may want to weigh in here but I was told I've had some

055hvc HVAC issues of my own and I was told they're coming out with a new refrigerant and if you buy a new new unit now it's got the old refrigerant so I was told you need to do everything you can to keep the one you have running and don't buy a new one until the new refrigerant comes out you that's kind of to my point because I was going to ask you know all the old units that we are replacing are we reclaiming that R22 in order to reuse it for the units that we aren't replacing so we are reclaiming as much refrigerant as possible so some of our um some of the units are R22 um we have a lot of 410 units so we reclaim as much refrigerant as possible I agree with

056the roof leaking the roof was literally leaking during meet the teacher and night at shap and intermediate like as you walked in the door like pouring down with with tons of parents and kids coming into the school so we do have roof issues in our district and this was tap in Middle yeah I mean that's what I'm saying this is the intermediate yeah I mean so I had one other question and it might be a tooker question but if you go back there was a slide that said that one right there what does 16 to 21 mean uh years these are um unspent Capital that we reclaimed from the 20 fy6 to 21 a few years ago uh we went back and looked at all of the unspent capital funds uh just knowing that we

057do contingency some projects are under budget we reclaimed all of that into one Capital project and uh handled some vestibules some alarms uh some other items I remember that so so is there now a process that you know you need to have a tail but it only is there a process now going forward that after two years or whatever we're going to keep doing that I would recommend and we haven't talked about it but we we recommend at least three years uh just because of the lag on projects and so you don't you know it's ideally like a paint job we can get done in a year within a calendar year a lot of these projects projects Roofing HVAC go into multiple physical years so if you do it under two physical years you don't

058really uh really assess if you're under or over uh but if we did it uh three to five years no longer than five I think that would be a good time to look at okay what was reclaimed and how do we move that forward I think going from here on like you Saida will'll never have a 16 to 21 Gap uh but but um no less than three no more five okay we're going to let you get back on track I know we kind of hijacked that for a second and we'll ask questions in a minute oh just a let okay all right got that just to let you know we're we've got a contractor working on the Skylight at Chap and intermediate because I've I've heard about that for for a number of years

059so uh I'm sorry where were we at so some of the identified School identified needs are of course some Marques we actually have four that are in the process one of them is is hero Elementary but that was because uh someone knocked it down but we went ahead and included that into the mix because as you may or may not know we actually have to take this to a architect for them to design it we have to go through OSF and get approval so it's a lot longer process than I thought we were uh so when it says Marquee designs we actually have Oak Point harvison West hero Elementary and one other I can't think off the top of my head Dutch Fort Middle uh that are actually in progress going through I think we've

060already got all the architect stuff back we had to go back out and uh get additional bids for heral elementary just because of the the power requirements uh that are required for that particular new sign uh we added a new uh heater exchange there a water heater exchange at Oak Point element uh we walked in there a couple years ago and realized that the bottom was rusting out so we identified that as an immediate need we've done some fren strange uh you might have recalled that we had some issues in and around the school the theater area that was leaking in through the walls we dug all that up put in the French drain and so far with all the rain we've had in the last two weeks we have not gotten a call on

061that so we're excited about that we've also identified some ADA requirements at Crossroads intermediate again we're waiting on the design from OSF so that we can go ahead and put that out for bid and it's basically adding a a list station into the the gym or the theater area uh as you can see or may you may have not have seen it hopefully you didn't see the Sun as you walked in here today at six o'clock uh because I think we took care of that issue uh we tinted those windows there on the doors uh that hopefully will solve our problem the the staff and the school likes it because out in the hallway you're not distracted to the people inside and people inside are not distracted as easily to uh the people on the

062outside what we when we looked at it we were looking at those big windows and we realized that would block the Sun from the hallways so we got together with the the principal uh Mr Frick and walked through this process and realized we could do the same thing with putting the tent on the doors and we were able to do that I was excited about that and we added a a motorized gate at the district office which is up there by by my office part of that is because with the new road coming through we're going to lose some of our driveway and it prevents us from having to walk out and open the gates and possibly into some traffic so we were able to get that completed over the summer some additional uh School

063needs we've done a lot of painting over the the summer and over the the course of the last couple months ARL High School Fieldhouse Crossroads Balltown Elementary CMS harverson West and Dutch for Middle if you look at Dutch for Middle we basically painted the whole inside of the school it really really looks good uh so as we identify the needs uh we're addressing those uh as we can it is a little bit easier to get painting contracts in here uh during the summer uh Dutch Fort Middle again this is some of the two pictures on the left you you may may not be able to tell how dirty the wall is or how worn the the doors are but if you walk through there now it's it literally looks like a brand new school some

064additional needs we've done some work at Dutch Fork Elementary on the gym restrooms uh those are the ones that we epoxy yeah we we've gone back to a lot of restrooms throughout the district you'll see this time and time again we're literally taking the old tile that's in there that's hard to clean because of the grout and and over the years it's it's kind of uh an older problem uh we're imp poxing that in putting in the school colors across the district so it looks uh kind of like you seen the commercials on car garage floors it looks a lot like that and it really makes it easier for the staff to clean makes it easier uh to to wipe all the water excess water or whatever is on the floor so we've done a

065lot of those we've done some uh hero Middle School some restrooms in the cafeteria Dutch Fort Middle we've actually done some work in some of those areas we we've done some uh new flooring in those area to include Texas granite uh which is in progress in the front other areas where you walk into the school we're looking finishing that up btown Elementary we repl on the the carpet with uh Texas granite in one of the rooms and of course we've done a lot of uh hallways in the uh Lake Murray Elementary actually we got that in progress we got to wait till the next three-day weekend so we can finish that up because we actually have to remove the toilets out put it in let it dry and put everything back in place um we've

066done Dutch Fork High School some countertops uh and I think we got a picture of that herl high school baseball stadium restrooms and then the restrooms underneath the football stadium uh so if you see the picture on the left you'll see what the floor looked like you can see the picture in the center uh again that's hero we got yellow black and and white specs in there kind of like the hermal colors and of course we Chang it to whatever School we're at and if you can see the the epoxy uh countertop uh that's the box and it has their logo in it of course along with their school colors so we' done a lot of fencing uh this summer we' we've looked at dfor or we we completed Lake Murray Elementary Nursery roads hero

067Elementary 7 Oaks Dutch Fork Elementary which originally wasn't part of our uh plan uh but after talking to the school if you're familiar with where those kindergarten classrooms are and that playground is Up on the Roof uh identified some concerns they had about not having a gate there so we included that into that districtwide project and got that completed during the summer and again you can see we did a lot of fencing Across The District chaen High School H Corley that back road where the car rider line uh starts we got a gate installed in there uh so that we can control the traffic a little bit better during the school days chap the middle uh although it's a fairly new school we had some fencing problems uh in and around the basketball courts students

068have a tendency when they're chasing the ball not to see the fence so that got loose pretty quick so we were able to get that fixed over the summer and the driveway that runs between the school and the basketball court they've had it several instances where cars lost parents or buses have gone down through there so we added gates to the front and back so that we could close that off when the kids are out there and keep them a little bit safer we still got some contingency plans uh we worked with DEC required us to replace the grease drains at harveston West and Crossroads so we're able to get that that done this summer uh it was part of our contingency as you can see it was $168,000 that we had to commit to

069that again if a requirement once they say it they give you so long to fix it and if you don't fix it you can't operate the kitchen so we obviously made that a priority uh with technology uh you can see the the the many projects that they've done across the district um I like the fact that we're adding more and more cameras to the district and some some storage systems for the video camera systems uh and we upgraded their their vehicles so that as they move this equipment around from uh building to building uh they have something that they can work with and easily store the equipment in there overnight and move it a little bit easier HVAC updates so this is what Al I'm going to let Alan talk to you this this is

070what we he mentioned earlier about we're identifying the life end of life for our HVAC systems and I'll let Alan walk through there with that with you so as we engaged with our um hbac contractor we had to um compile a list of information of all of our equipment across the district that also included their um their um installation dates or or when when the the um when the equipment was made so uh we really wanted just to kind of see across the district how everything looked um and from the chart you can see um just that overall average for each School uh you can see the midpoint uh we're showing about seven and a half years and overall in Industry standard is about 15 years for equip you know for um the average piece

071of of of equipment um our goal of course is to extend that as much as possible we would like to take that as far as we possibly can um but just for the visuals and so everyone can see exactly where we are I just you know want to show everyone this this is where the district stands um with our equipment and and one of the things that you you may or may not realize I had to ask Alan is if you look at Dutch Fork High School and Dutch Fork Middle School in theory Dutch Fork High School was built first you'd think their equipment would be oder but we've added a a new science and fieldhouse in there so you you put new equipment in there we've done a lot of replacement there so this

072captures all the units that we replace so we have an understanding of the average across within that school um again one of the things with our new prented maintenance program is try to extend the life of this equipment and uh M Barnhart you pointed out that there's new uh refrigerant coming in there uh apparently that stuff is pretty valuable the R2 R22 that we have is getting hard to find but we are capturing that so that we can use it in some of the older units but as we go and identify new units we're looking and making sure that we have the right refrigerant and the right plans to put that into place and capture that so it gives you an idea of where we're at across the board but but it's it's you got

073to understand that the every time you add a new HVAC or new Wing or new thing uh within the system or we're able to re retrofit or upgrade uh it impacts the overall life of what we can do with the school so ideally our preventive maintenance plan is going to try to get it up to 20 years but the problem with that also is in 20 years there'll probably be something new out there uh and then again we got to look at the controls across the district because we're finding a lot of schools have older equipment and older controls which makes it difficult for the teachers so um U pending any questions uh I'm gonna ask Mr Scully real fast if he still has a question I know you were on the tail end of

074yeah just um real quickly I want to back up to the yellow and white original slide um and then I'll come back to that each back but on the the cost for H Corley and River Springs that are listed as the expenditures the 4.9 and 6.4 th000 is that the cost of the scans the thermal scans that were done so the remaining balance is going to go towards the repairs yes sir okay do you expect those balances to cover the the required repairs at this point now that you have the scans to know what yes sir okay yes sir um and then just on the last slide about the agback I I guess my question there is and is is any of that in your opinion is any these what we're seeing with our HVAC

075units they're not it's not abnormal right I mean the we we've experienced extraordinary heat in this area and based on the time frame and the life cycle of the units I mean does our community need to be concerned about you know the are we do we have faulty equipment or is it just kind of expected in the normal life cycle of the units from what we're seeing it's it's pretty expected um outside maybe some of the newer units I think that was just you know maybe they had a design FLW um and they now have um a um you know a workaround with a a um a new wiring harness and I know it's unfortunate that they also seem to be happening at the same time but I mean we at my house we bought

076our HVAC two years ago and it had a breakdown last year or at the beginning of the summer my in-laws three years ago and theirs is now out and having to be repaired significantly so it does I mean this is equipment it's a machine that's going to break down unfortunately but I don't want the community to think that we've we went and recklessly purchased bad units or anything like that this is for the most part unfortunately but not abnormal I I would say that that's correct and as we look at what we're putting into capital and then uh what we had last year and then what we've requested this year um I think we've requested one 1.5 million for um the hbac upgrades to also include equipment and the building automation controls um given the

077size of our district the amount of equipment we have um that will help us reduce the what we're seeing with the equipment that's above 15 years okay thank you Mr saterfield yeah and you may have said this I may have missed it um equipment EOL end of the line that's what it stands for in end of life because at a certain point in time they're going to stop making parts for equipment so you're going to get about 15 years and there there are going to be some things like Capac cap itors and compressors that you you may be able to to to go further than than just 15 years but at some point you're not going to be able to um maybe like refrigerant you there there's just you're not going to find um some

078pieces of of equipment um or parts for R22 units anymore it's just they don't make them now Dr Ross we do we have a contract now with a company for now is this for service and filter change and that's correct we have a contractor to to help us we have 3,700 units of HVAC in our system we have three employees to work it so with all of those demands we have to contract outside of those three employees so I guess what we are trying to show you is that these are the average age we have a lot of units are way past into life um as you said you know when some of the refrigerant issues are there Parts issues and we have some issues are just not working so other units have to kind

079of pull the weight for that uh as Mr Scully said and with the humidity the heat they're working kind of extra overtime so this has just given a picture of what it's going to take uh we would love to be at midpoint at all of our buildings uh I think one of the most um you know we heard about the complaints at noral high school um getting the the small gym correct but even the old building uh we have a very unique system that we're trying to operate there because it's a building stacked on top of a building so the way that we run um Heating in air it's just very unconventional I I was just curious what kind of feedback do we get from this company that provides this service I mean are they

080telling us look here folks you're you know EOL you got more eols than you than you realize so they do provide feedback whenever there's equipment that is so that we have like full coverage at the high schools if the equipment is no longer repairable then they're going to say hey at this point we can we can no longer you know repair this piece of equipment now we have to replace it and if they see other pieces of equipment as they go through the prevented maintenance um then they will provide that information also so saying hey we're seeing this maybe at a middle school or Elementary School that there's some some things that they want us to to you know go ahead and take care of before it becomes a major problem then we we'll address

081that I and I was just curious is this slide available to teachers do they know which schools are end the line this was just some information that we were able to put together I'm just kidding I just uh I know this teachers will complain about just being too hot and some of the schools are a lot of them are at the end of the line so thank you I have a question real fast um kind of speaking to these projects I know that your I think your first slide was the was a chart with the 2324 capital projects and it um on it it it kind of goes through the status that they're in progress or they're complete or they haven't been started or they're on going um ongoing and in progress the same thing

082kind of uh but so my question regarding this this document right here is what is your working document for like every year we have a new capital budget so we have a 23 24 capital budget and these are the projects that we're working on we're trying to get through but for do you have a 22 23 capital budget document that like you're preparing against this to see that we're getting everything done I mean what the reason I'm asking is it is very easy to for some of these projects to get lost and the money not to get spent and as different people are touching the projects and the money's being touched by different CFOs or different you know there's different boards and there's different employees working on them uh for me it's a little bit

083hard to say okay well we've completed everything in 22 3 because I don't think I've ever really seen one of these where we've completed everything there's always something that we're kind of working on and and it so I'm just trying to be able to conceptualize all of these projects that we're doing on our just on our $15 million annual capital budget I have a little blue book over there on my table that literally tracks literally money all the way back to 2016 the old is that possible to be shared on our website or or something to that effect where you could where I mean I mean board members definitely I would think we would want to go to miss huddle has asked about asking the previous years you said that that was kind of going

084to be discussed tonight as well um those spreadsheets and project lists so we would like because um this is something that it currently we can say as of this date because that that number is changing daily so unless it's like locked into the your actual account it's changing daily I think for us it's we need to just be able what I would like is we have these for each um capital expenditure it sits in one master capital account broken down into years uh we would like with um we have to do the reclaiming so that's why we had the issue from 16 to 21 but uh to to maybe just create a a policy that every three years you would we would see how many of these are completed because a lot of these Capital

085issues can't be done in the summer or within the the budget season so if we can capture it over three years I think it would be helpful but what we can do is go back and provide this document for the last few Capital years and put that on our website so that the public can see where we are on these I think a policy would be great but I also think that there's got to be some kind of working document that you're at you know you're looking at and being able to kind of see that um is helpful as we're looking at how especially as we have more and more projects come up I mean I don't know um I Missle I know that you were you had questions about the 22 um that that's

086why I and I asked if that was going to be discussed today and um so I was yeah that's why I asked because it's kind of a recurring thing that I mean it's just the way things work it's just like if you had a budget to fix things on your house you're not going to get to all of them sometimes you're waiting on a contract or whatever but that was really why I asked because we had that issue before that it had kind of accumulated over and that was like before all of us right um so and just to see like how much were we kind of behind because the other thing you might decide to do is something bigger's popped up right you budgeted for this it's kind like your house too right maybe

087you weren't going to repair the roof you were going to do something else and now the roof's leaking so it might be an opportunity to review periodically where we are and if y'all need our approval to move money um that's available from something that's was originally thought to be important to something that now may be more important all right um yeah Miss barnhard and then I'll come to Mr saterfield uh a couple questions approximately how many rtus are f 15 years or older I would have to go calculate that information okay you both of the question and the answer are how many rtus mean rooftop units are 15 years or above so at that kind of end of life stage or above specifically the rooftop units because I mean I know there's all kinds of

088different ones like at hero there's one like in the middle of the two stories and stuff but I was just curious about the rooftop units um second the new refrigerants that are coming in not to sorry freak anybody out or anything but they are considered mildly flammable in some certain instances are we making sure that there are things in place uh just precautionary measures for that I have not studied a whole lot about um I'm not up to date on on the new refrigerants um I've I've heard a little bit about them I'd had to speak with my energy and mechanical manager to get additional information about that just you know they've been phasing this out since like 2013 or something so it's a it's a whole process trust me I have to deal with

089it um as well and then with the bids and stuff like we said you have 3700 some OD units and three people working on them and without the um company that we're using are we getting bids from other places to try and kind of alleviate some of the pressure on the one the the contract we bid out this contract and we had multiple groups bid on it we took the lowest qualified bidder on that one so I think to break to get other groups in that contract we may have to we we do have to bid some of that out to other vendors to keep it fair and consistent with the purchasing requirements so there are although there is one vendor that services our equipment and advises us as they see things when we have

090to replace units there are bids that go out and we have to use multiple vendors across the district so uh I can't remember how many there are but there's a multitude of different ones because some of them don't work on trains obviously some of them work on different units to your BCS D and stuff like that Mr s uh yeah I was going to just make a suggestion I think it's a great idea to get sort of a progress report on on how what kind of and I know that needs certainly do come up during the school year um it might be a good idea too Dr Ross to uh uh when when you get to that point to where you want to give an update or report is to explain how this process works

091um I'm sure it's similar to back in the day when I was involved with it but how uh capital projects come about how the requests how they're prioritized and things like that and that would just be informative to the board so they'd have a little better understanding of of how that whole thing works just a suggestion all right any other questions all right thank you very much thank you that concludes the superintendent's report and we stand for any questions any other questions for the superintendent report as a whole Miss huddle um I had a question going way back to um the reading um scores and I was looking through the this big old thing we got from the scspa and they were talking about um third grade retention and summer reading in camps and I

092was just wondering is that is that new are those a big deal those changes for us I know we've always um that's one of the reasons we do our summer reading Camp is with um the read to succeed legislation we that was the beginning of uh where the third grade retention would come in and then uh Miss MCC and her team they meet with those uh families they have the Green Sheet um and so you want to kind of explain how we handle the third grade retention piece sure and I think you asked if there were any changes and that is that correct well yeah I was reading it and um it said that um students who are unable to comprehend grade level text and who qualify for mandatory retention must be enrolled in a

093summer reading camp and I was wondering is that a change or is has it been that way um it used to say does not meet one which is the lowest you take that does not meet and there's a a lower tier and there's a a tier one and a tier two excuse me and so it used to be that now for this coming school year it's all of our does not meet students so um whenever you look at that it is it will be a larger percentage of our students that will be mandated to go to summer reading Camp the if they have a good cause exemption they will not be mandated to go but the good cause exemptions are much less than what we had because some of those have been taken away so

094that number is going to increase plus um they're beginning now to say that we have to include first grade I believe is the grade that they've put in there for for 25 26 for 24 25 school year will have to include first grade and then each year after that they're going to begin adding grade levels um so that's going to increase the size what funding is going to come with that we'll have to wait and see um by followup is just um I guess there's a I'm just worried that parents find out kind of in May right so is there some kind of education that goes along with that to the parents whose children do not who up here they're going to have to okay so I can explain that so as curriculum nights are

095happening now for second and third grade families we have a presentation that every teacher um does it's actually a voice over presentation so the teacher doesn't have to do it themselves it's already just something for the parents to watch talking about read to succeed and what the requirements are and all of that come January as soon as our map is given in December we know what that cut score we will know what that cut score will be soon used to be 177 that will change because with it being Olive does not meat it's going to be lower than that so um um but 177 was the cut off so any child that meets that criteria in January based on our winter map we're mandated to have a conference with that parent they have to sign

096off they're they're told the dates of summer reading Camp right then and they know that their child is at risk for having to attend camp and then we keep up with that throughout and then of course um we actually make some decisions based on Spring map to go ahead and do some invites of those students who are showing that they're at risk then the final list doesn't happen until I mean it really is the end of May but knock on wood typically we get the list within four or five students so by looking at map we typically have invited the students that should be invited and then it's not that last minute there are always a few but for the most part it's it's taken care of any other questions all right so that moves

097us to number 10 on our agenda the approval of the minutes of the August 5th 2024 board meeting do I have a motion Mr Hogan i' like to make a motion that we approve the minutes of the August 5th 2024 board meeting do I have a second second uh miss her Miss huddle second any discussion seeing that I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to zero and and that brings us to public participation and I understand we have we have one tonight all right before we um call that speaker up I just want to remind you that the board welcomes and encourages public participation we respectfully ask that you adhere to the procedures provided in board policy bedh public participation at meetings your comment should be limited to three minutes

098and must remain on either the topic noted on your signin form or a listed agenda item questions asked or public participation will be handled in accordance with board policy bedh Miss Taylor thank you madam chair Scott Herring is here to speak about the free lunch program bet you're all glad I'm not going to talk about HVAC systems probably right I just want to take a few moments to thank Dr Ross and the board and the district uh in general for making sure that our uh many of our schools this year are going to be able to take part in the free lunch program um based on the number of schools that we see that are qualifying for that we can really highlights the need for that in our district and I would think many folks

099think that um qualifying for free lunch is a a very cut and dry um situation you either do or you don't but I can imagine many families that during the year incur hardships a parent has lost a job has to stay home and take care of their parent or one of their children and now children in those schools or family of those schools don't have to go through any kind of process to apply for that free lunch and that frees them from the burden and can take care of the things that they need for their family at home for sure um last spring I was able to go to school with my daughter and have lunch at her school at Harbison West and um such a fun day to be there with her and I

100got to tell you if you haven't been in my cafeteria recently those brussels sprouts and baked chicken were on point they were killing it and I let those lunchroom uh technicians know about that so it's really important to me that we're taking this very masian approach to making sure that our kids' needs are basic needs are met so because we know until they are they're not really to ready to learn in the classroom and be engaged so thank you very much thank you to whomever at the district office was responsible for putting together what I would assume is a massive amount of paperwork to make that happen and it's really great to see these things going on in District thank you all right thank you for that and that brings us uh that concludes public

101participation correct all right and that brings us to the action agenda number 12 action as necessary or appropriate on matters discussed executive session do I have a motion Mr Hogan yeah i' like to make a motion to approve selected employment item should exhibit a do I have a second Miss snip seconded uh any discussion seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to zero is there any other motions Mr hog one more out of executive session on see I'd like to make a motion the board approves the outline services with Stan Tucker in the amount of $ 31,6 for professional development all right do I have a I heard Miss Snipes first any discussion all right and seeing none I'll call for the vote all in [Music] favor uh

102that motion carries 7even to zero and any others I don't think that I there are any others I think the other one is for 13 all right so that moves us to item 13 the approval of a proposed financial advisor Dr Ross yes Miss Tucker our CFO will come forward to uh bring forth our recommendation for financial advisor is this good can you hear me kind of Madam chair board uh the admin ation recommends approving a one-year renewal term beginning October 11 2024 and ending on October 10 2025 the administration requests approval of this agreement under Section 710 exemptions of the district's procurement code code exemptions for 6D financial advisors all right do I have a motion Mr Hogan do have a second second I heard miss barard all right any discussion or questions for

103Miss Tucker I almost called you Miss Taylor Miss Tucker all right seeing none I'll call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to Z all right and then that moves us to item 14 the approval of the District Attorney's list 2024 2025 as seen and exhibit g m Tucker M Tucker the administration recommends approving the attached firms for attorneys for FY 20242 the administration requests the approval of these firms under Section 710 exemption of the district's procurement code policy and legal services right do have a motion Mr Hogan I'd like to make a motion the board approve the uh approved attorney list for fiscal year 2024 2025 do I have a second second miss barard seconded any discussion seeing none I will call for a vote all in favor that motion carries

1047 to zero and that moves us to item 15 approval of minority business on Enterprise utilization plan it's mouthful mouthful as seen in exhibit h m Tucker so the administration recommends appr approval of the attached minority business Enterprise utilization plan um this plan um was brought forward two years ago in April of 2022 um and it it tries to bring a 10% of the district's total dollar amount of funds um and the processes in place to work towards this goal to bring U minority businesses um doing work with the district okay do I have a motion Mr Hogan I'd like to make a motion the board approve the recommend ations as presented for the minority business Enterprise second I saw Mr saterfield did you second yourself that yes sorry I just wanted to make sure

105I included what I needed to include into it I this one caught me off guard you did you did all right so Mr Hogan made the motion Mr saterfield seconded any discussion all right um I will call for the vote all in favor that motion carries 7 to Z thank you very much much Miss Tucker and that brings us to our discussion agenda are we staying up I'm staying up okay I just just making sure all right so our discussion agenda is um number 16 discussion on proposed revisions to board policy kbe relations with parent organizations as seen and exhibit I so this began with Senate Bill 245 five is a bill to mandate local school boards to require criminal background checks of all School Board school booster club officials the law specifically prohibits persons

106who have been convicted pled guilty or no l contendre to financial crimes from serving as a financial officer for a booster club a booster club is defined as a parent-led organization that is not controlled by a school district and has the primary purpose of raising funds for the school School District programs intercol actic Athletics or after school activities this would include all PTO and PTA groups as well well as booster clubs um Financial officers who maintain the club's Financial records or have a signatory Authority or financial transactions accounts contracts checks the law would require them to register annually with the school board or superintendent by August 1st and the club would be prohibited from dispersing funds for any purpose until that registration has been completed upon receipt of a booster club's registration the law states

107that a school board May request a criminal records check including fingerprints from the South Carolina law enforcement division of the financial officer so this uh proposal or discussion agenda um would bring some changes to our current policy kbe um it is modeled after the model policy from the school board association with only two minimal changes that I proposed in the um the model the the updated policy um one of them I added the current model policy states that groups who fail to register by the August 1 deadline will be prohibited from dispersing monies raised to benefit school or District programs and it gives no option to register later than that August 1 deadline so I added in until registration has been completed and approved by the board the other modification I made to the model

108policy states on page two that the cost for the background checks will be paid by the booster club or parent organization and not the district um the model policy left that open for discussion um and so that was my recommendation but definitely open for discussion okay I have several questions but I'm going to I saw Mr saterfield in the I'll go to miss huddle yeah I had one question what if you have turnover during the year in other words somebody gets ill or somebody gets replaced in a position um I mean you're dependent on volunteers and uh let's say that um somebody gets ill or they get uh they move and somebody has to come on board and replace them what would you how would you handle that I know typically from working with PTO

109and booster clubs the typically you have the treasurer who is the financial um responsibility party for the booster Hever PTO but typically you have the president as the second signatory Authority and so I think we would need to require both of those parties to go through that uh background check at sled um so that they would both be registered and then we would address moving um another person into that role and requiring a background check as well okay so you're saying that you're okay with your with your recommendation after August 1st if there's a situation because I know I dealt with a a booster club issue and it happened during the school year and I had a myriad of changes in that booster club issue so so I think uh the the August first deadline

110just wants them to register to let the district know who the financial officer is who the officer for the entire Club is and so I think that was the intent for the registration and then once those um individuals have fulfilled their background check um and just the person that would have Financial signature Authority so the typically the treasurer or the president um I think that that would be um that that would be okay as long as they're registered by August 1 or a date later and then approved by the board Miss did you have a question um I have a can I have I have a couple a couple together okay um I guess my my first question is this says that U for review and approval by the board and we've never done that

111since I've been here so the recommendations that we actually approve aist and that's a big question that I have as well that is that is only in the model policy it's not in our existing policy correct um the the model policy says R review and approval by the board um and this model policy came out even after the August 1 deadline so in order to scramble to make sure we were in compliant with the law um we have sent out a Google form to all um president or all um uh principles of both middle uh elementary middle and high schools um to get that information from their PTO ptas and booster club and send it out last last week and have gotten over 17 registered just with their finan or just with their officers information

112um right now it doesn't require this Leed background checks but I think that's the where the where the law and the policy the model policy we moving towards okay um the other question I have is it it talks about the formation of parent groups um and it gives examples including but not limited to and I'm just wondering should the definition be broader like any group that is affiliated with the school that collects money I mean I'm just wondering what kind of groups do we have because I know we have you know the track club or the you know what I'm saying I mean I I just how do are we sure where the the lines are of what groups this applies to and which groups don't and is it money is it use of school

113facilities what's those hard and fast lines I think the M the the law and then the model policy gives that very broad definition of booster clubs as including PTO PTA anybody that's raising money but I think that we could look definitely look at including any group that raises money because again that was the intent of the of the law was to require a a background check for anybody that's handling funds while while they're not District funds they're associated with the school and they need to be held accountable for that and so I think that was the intent so if if that's something that we need to include we can definitely look at that so kind of piggybacking off of that um question regarding board approval what is in the model policy that is not in

114our existing policy and I have major concerns about is the parent organizations Desiring to use the name of the district or school to organize fundraise or advertise must obtain the approval of the board as a prerequisite continued use of the school's name logo mascot is contingent upon compliance with all applicable board policies etc etc so this policy this model policy is basically saying that every group that wants to fundraise that wants to use um do a a banquet to to sell those little cards for the small businesses discount cards or sell anything cookies or any athletic team that wants to you know raise money for uniforms any booster club any um you know any club that's trying to raise money to go on a trip before they do any of that all of those all

115of the schools in the district would have to individually for each project get board approval and that seems crazy to me um I feel like we haven't had a major problem with that so far the the law requiring a treasurer of any parent organization or any organization in our district to have a sled background check I mean that's common sense you don't want to turn over money with someone that has a criminal history of stealing money or you know or being untrustworthy that makes sense and I I get having all of those organizations at the beginning of the year with a deadline getting a board approval to make sure that that has happened it's not necessarily approving the group it's just saying you know the checks and balances the approval was granted having every organization

116um try to get approval to have any kind of fund I mean I don't know about what my fellow board members think but I think that's asinine and we should take that completely out of the whatever we're going to propose as a policy um because the administrative burden is crazy let me just add on one second Mr Mr Scully has hand raised and I'll yeah my question in response to that would be can that be delegated can this par and be interpreted to be the board delegating that responsibility to the individual like to superintendent who then delegates it to the principls of the schools and then it kind of reduces that burden is that do we have legal advice well I don't really even think we should delegate it to the superintendent to delegate it

117to a principal I mean I think all of these student mean maybe a principal but but I know at our at like our PTO um because I was shair before I um came to the board our principles was already in those conversations we couldn't just I feel like decide to do an event and we had to I feel like that's that's already happening um I mean I think it should definitely be decided at the school level uh I mean because it's not being it's not being decided right now at the at the district level I mean Dr Ross is telling me all the time that we're putting too much on the uh Administration and of our schools I mean I just think that this is one of those where that that will prevent student organizations

118from wanting to have to go through the bureaucracy and red tape of trying to raise money to help kids is it the law that's requiring no that's the model that's the policy the law is the portion about the sled background checks and having those approvals okay the the model policy which comes from the Schoolboard Association this stuff had is in that in their policy and we didn't adopt that when we adopted our policy okay um the other question that I have regarding kind of regarding this is with the board repr approval and the board having final authority over all monies raised to benefit a school become the property of the district how does that play in and this is this is probably going to need legal advice how does this play in with like our

119booster clubs that are 501 c3s that are not the district that raise hundreds of thousands of dollars would the district be able to come in and the board say okay well this club raised $400,000 we could take some of that money and put it towards this school because they didn't I mean those are questions that are being asked and so I'm and and what's the real authority of the school district over a 501c3 raising money for the district like who controls that money this policy makes it very gray right so I just think that we need that those are answers if we're changing this um I think that those are answers that we need as we draft the policy Miss hle um yeah just to clarify um um this is a new law it was

120just signed into in by the governor but in looking at the law it it appears that we can't delegate it that's but we need a lawyer I'm not a lawyer but I'm just reading through it but what is interesting is it says um that we may require a state criminal records check so I'd kind of like us to look at can we have some simple form that people fill out you guys decide who needs a background check because it should be a lot of money and not selling cupcakes it it should be whatever you guys decide and that way when we can just approve them like routinely kind of like we approve new hires and that kind of that is different than the law doesn't say I don't believe that that you have to approve

121every fundraiser it it says that you have to if it's their major purpose that's what it it defines it as if a booster club is a parent-led organization direct not directly controlled by a school or District that is formed with the primary purpose of raising funds for the school School District programs inter Athletics or after school activties they would have to have a background check no they just have to register and then the background check is a May and it doesn't say who has to do it okay that's where I'm getting confused with what you're saying what you're saying is in that first paragraph that that is definitely the law what I'm saying is once they're approved once they've gotten I think they should have a background check I mean I mean I think that

122people are shady and you never know they don't look shady and you know then they steal all the money um and yes I said that sorry but I mean that I mean that happens I think that you should have to have a background check if you're controlling the money but my big problem was with this is saying that you have to approve every fund individual fundraiser or event or if you're going to have a billboard or whatever if you're raising money for any of the things that's my that's where I feel like this policy is no I think it's just the organization yeah so I'm just saying like as we're talking about drafting this policy like if it comes back for a first reading at our next meeting I would propose that we take that

123part out I don't know if y'all propose that or not and then I think that there might be a question of whether or not we um um sorry I keep hitting myself on this I apologize um is the I just lost my train of thought is whether or not we require the sled background checks I think that we should do that um Miss Tucker put that on the I'm GNA put this on she put that on the booster club and not our district I'm just kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding because that was a an either or in the M I'm teasing you I'm teasing I did work for slid so I've had a background strong opinion about that one way or the other but um um I mean I don't know I don't know what

124what your thoughts are I think requiring the background check personally I think requiring the background check for the financial officer and the president because they could be a co-signer on any um on any booster club or PTO I think that would be a good recommendation I do think we probably should get um some guidance on the can we can we designate the approval process to continue with our current approval process um and I've talked to a few people um and other school districts to see how they're addressing this and it seems like there are um some that are going through the same approval process sending things to the board big things for legal issues um to make sure that they are in compliant and they're covered with liability um and so I think there you

125might see a little bit of both people pushing more things towards the board for approval um and then some people keeping things at the school level because that is a a burden on right I would just say if um to everyone that you know are anyone that is listening to this meeting or here or any other of my fellow board members if you talk to anyone that's in an organization at all of I mean we have all you know all of these schools and they all kind of operate you know in their own little realm of something that we're not thinking about that the policy may affect in a good way or a bad way I mean I would be interested to know before we change it um because I think every school does things

126a little bit different um Miss barard I agree with what you're saying it did seem very vast and a lot of things for us to like you pointed out you know individual bake sales or doing a car wash for uniforms that's a lot um a thought is kind of how you said we get the updated you know higher list every board meeting maybe just from each individual school I mean that might even be a lot have the a list of the things from each school and then not for approval necessarily but if it's not within the law that we have to individually approve every single one so I would like to get legal guidance on this but yeah I would like to be informed of what what we're doing when even when it comes to

127bake sales just to you know support our schools and our um teachers in those groups but it does seem like a lot to individually approve by the board every single it just yeah it definitely seems over I know it seems a little extreme that that portion of it um okay any other thoughts on the discussion part of this policy under item 16 okay will you stay for the rest no I'm not okay all right thank you all right thank thank you Miss Tucker so what we'll do is uh understanding we'll get with legal counsel about uh the limits of the law and delegation and then um bring that back for first reading okay and that brings us to item 177 which is the discussion of pro proposed revisions to board policy ke library media center

128material selection and reconsideration process under exhibit J thank you madam chair members of the board uh our chief academic officer Tina mcco will come forth uh with revisions to kec or discussion of K and KR as you're aware on uh June 25th of this year regulation 43170 um it actually became L taking effect on August 1st uh this does as mentioned earlier have impacts to um our financial position uh and so we wanted to begin the discussion uh so that we're in compliance with this law so Mr mcco thank you madam chair Dr Ross and board um if you will will agree I would like to really discuss keec and kcr at the same time um there it is Ross was supposed to say that but he didn't he just he's whispering in my ear

129that's fine okay great so um because they really go hand in hand so you'll see um first of all I am going to make an apology before I go any further last time we met we talked about whether or not the material had to be removed while you were making a decision that was in our current policy that is not in the current law so just so you know that it it does we do not have to remove the material until the decision is made so that was a a mistake that I made and I wanted to make sure that I cleared that up so the material does not have to be taken off the shelf until the decision is made okay um so with K the model policy that you have in front of

130you is pretty um it's pretty succinct in terms of just the KE piece of it um so the kcr is where you're going to see more in terms of how this plays out so how do we actually implement it so what we are proposing whenever we discuss this we're proposing to add some things to the KR model policy i' we'd like to add like the the the definitions first of all and you see that um on these slides the definitions of what an instructional material is the definition of the instructional program what age in development are appropriate means and these are straight out of the law so these are not District 5 definitions these are definitions that come out of the law complainant is not in the law as a definition itself but um we

131do feel that that's important to just make sure that we know that a complaintant is the parent or legal guardian of a student within the district um and then the word reasonable comes up and that's also not defined within the law and so that's something that we've taken a shot at to put a definition here certainly something we can discuss but reasonable meaning requesting information that is easily acceptable and does not take away from the teacher's instructional planning time to prepare um and then looking at the procedure for selection and review of instructional materials these are just some things that are really straight out of the law that are listed here that are not listed in the model policy that we're just recommending be things that you consider that we add to the kcr um

132certainly the the criteria that's listed there um making sure sure that we list the fact that we will maintain a list on the website for our library materials making sure that we put on there that parents can ask and this is where that word reasonable comes into play really needing to Define what reasonable is and being able to decide what that process is going to be for a parent if they want to request all of the supplemental materials that that a child has access to to so without reading all of that to you I certainly can if if uh oh I just hit button um without reading all of that to you those are things for us to discuss in terms of additions so I'm going to stop there for a few minutes and just

133ask you to think about that and then there's some things within the law that that are definite that are things that the board has to make a decision on that I'll talk you through as well but let's talk about those additions and what you're thinking in terms of what what do you what do you what do you feel about that anyone I okay I had trouble finding where the def you said that that y'all added the definition of instructional materials is that in KC or kcr and can you help me find it we would be adding it to kcr but if you look at the law itself those definition are right at the beginning of the law so you're saying you would add it to the model policy but it's that wasn't in the packet

134right that is correct just making sure the law itself is in the packet right but the so the you're saying the we have the model policy and your suggestion would be to take that one and add the definition from the law correct great okay thanks and I just want to just kind of couch this discussion we got this like four days before the the packet was due so we were asking U Madam chair if we could just kind of take today to kind of build our notes then uh we'll meet with our principles also to get feedback on reasonable and that way when we bring back a recommendation policy it would have all of this deliberation included I would say I have a question about the definition of reasonable and the definition that um we

135have that was provided as a suggestion I guess like my question about it is you're right reasonable isn't defined that it is hard to Define because what I think is reasonable is different than what you think is reasonable but if you're going to Define it and put it in a policy like should there be parameters of guidelines because this is saying requesting information that's easily accessible and does not take away from the teacher's instructional planning time to prepare well anything that you you requ if you're challenging something of material and saying that it's unreasonable however that you're however that's resolved it's going to take time away from planning and preparing for our class right and and and and what makes it hard to Define that and and to you and to say we should Define

136it is because is it dependent on the circumstance like maybe depending on what the lesson is reason able is we need a teacher needs to be able to Define this within a one to two day time frame because this is when we're covering the material in class or is it you know a long-term project and a a week now remember that this is talking about asking for the list of all materials being used in the classroom this is not the complaint so then reasonable would be immediate because they should have that right they will have they will have their classrooms they will have their any syllabus or newsletters or emails to the parents with that material they will have that but let's say that the parent wants specific names of videos that they've used that

137may be something that could take extensive time that that may take more than one to two days to pull from because it wouldn't necessarily I mean they could go through their lesson plans and find that but they wouldn't necessarily have just a spreadsheet of all the videos that they have used like from a from YouTube or whatever they might pull it from so that would tie into our discussion on our supplemental materials policy yes and so reasonable might be in this policy defined as one way but how it is how we transfer that into other policies and other uses is something to be cognizant of right I mean I'm not other policy doesn't necessarily use the word reasonable um this is actually the only policy that uses that word is reasonable and it's only talking

138about the reasonable request of the parent for the materials okay so that's the only place that that that word is used anybody have any other thoughts Mr zfi can you turn your mic on please you're okay uh just so I can put my thoughts in line because when I was looking at that I looked at I was studying KC and then referred to K C and it kind of bounces back and forth to be honest with you uh I do like the uh uh South Carolina School Board Association model policy uh statement that says any parent or legal guardian of a any student who attends the school in the district who has made a good faith effort to address their concerns at the school level I think that's one of the things that I I've

139heard from teachers of course the teachers field a little overwhelmed by this law like I'm sure many of us have heard um but the idea that if there's a concern from a parent if they they should at least exhibit a good faith effort that they've tried to solve the problem uh you know if it's a if it's an issue with uh a a book you know there's always an alternative book that can be used if it's an issue with uh something that's uh in the class uh there are other classes they can take they can transfer to another client there are a lot of there's a myriad of things that I know that I dealt with when I was a principal but um I think that um teachers are feeling and principles I believe are

140feeling like all this goes over their head and um people have direct access to this law to this board and that's why we're discussing this tonight to try to make heads or taals of it but um they feel a little helpless and then they're being told and I know that a lot of schools in a lot of districts I've talked to folks in other districts and they're scrambling to try to make heads or Tales of this but I I just wanted to say that getting back to K I do like that it's sort of a good faith in your teachers that parents have at least made the attempt to contact to talk with the teachers uh about the books or the instructional material that are is being used um I agree I think it's really

141great that it that l which actually came from the state regulation from the Department of Education it's not the model policy I think that that's great and and my other uh let me see if I can find my other question um well we'll I'm sure we'll talk more about the law I'm assuming we'll talk a little bit more about the law um but the the way that the that this whole thing is being presented it is so encompassing and for everything I mean it's not just for a book or a textbook it is encompassing for everything imaginable that a teacher can use in the classroom and I know over the years I know lots of teachers that they'll get a class and they'll start searching on the internet they'll start looking for stuff that they

142can use to help better meet the needs of their students and that's just good teaching and that's what we ask teachers to do to try to meet the needs of their kids um uh so I am I'm concerned and I know I expressed my concern in the last board meeting uh this Myriad this all this language page after page after page uh that is being sent to our district and to our teachers and I obviously they're not in education they wrote this law to be all encompassing um but it's like a lot of things they're not the ones that have to put it into practice and so they've made it very chall challenging for schools and and school boards and everybody else to make heads or taals of this but um I will say just

143one thing to to try to keep because there's a couple of things here that are needing to stay sep kind of separate so you've got the the complaints from parents that they're they're against maybe a topic or a material that's being used that's what the good faith effort of trying to solve it at the school level before it comes to the board so that's the complaint that we we don't like a particular topic that's being addressed or or a book that's being used or whatever and then there's this word reasonable when it's talking about asking just for a list of materials that are being used they're not necessarily challenging the material at this point they're just asking for the list of all the materials that are being used that's where the word reasonable is is

144coming into the law and and even into to the policy so it's it's really those are two separate things to keep in mind so you've got a process for parents that are trying to complain or or against a particular topic that's where the good faith effort and the schools are trying to handle it and then you've got this reasonable request but you have to be a parent within the school district to ask for the list of materials that are being used in a single classroom and I understand that I fully understand that I mean teachers teachers have syllabus and they have all this or syllabi and they have all this available uh to them I think that the teachers initially a lot of them were concerned because they had to get all this before school

145started and they had to they were trying to get ready to teach a lesson or learn their new textbooks and they had all this information they were supposed to gather for the whole year uh before we even got cranked up so to speak um so just some reasonableness I mean I don't know that any teacher I've never worked with a teacher that would uh refuse to share with a parent if a parent said can you tell me what y'all are studying or what materials y'all are using and and again most teachers post that they post the books they're using uh the supplemental materials that they're using uh so I think that is within reason for teachers I agree um so uh okay Mr Scully yeah and I agree with your comments about the good Faith

146effort but my question is does there is there any teeth in that um what what is a good faith effort I I should we provide any kind of instructional language to the policy that would kind of outline examples of good faith effort or what what we're going to have people just submitting a shooting off an email to A A teacher or a principal real quick and then turning right around and and complaining are we though I said are we though are are we going to have so many complaints that we're because I'm asking because we don't have that many complaints now I mean you get them every now and then sure but do we but it's it's possible there's no without kind of any instructional language in the policy that could very well happen and

147and then we could have that I mean it's it's certainly possible yeah Miss Barnhart um I mean I do think that there will be opportunities but like you said there's we don't get that many complaints I mean throughout a school year very here and there few um and it is a a very all-encompassing legal definition that they've come out with but I think there's just been so many instances of um they kind of being read in different ways and that being brought down to the classroom level that it needed to be more of a larger uh definition of these things in order for school boards to enact their policies after that so and I kind of take it as this regulation was drafted by the State Department of Education and we haven't even got I

148mean we we're talking like on the very surface level of this conversation because we're not we haven't even gotten to the fact that this policy it it also has like that whole appeal Appel process so we have to figure out you know when when something is challenged from our perspective as a board you know how that's handled but then ultimately everything is going to be taken to the Department of Education to the State Board to re to review and they're ultimately going to decide if something is done in good faith or is reasonable I mean those are things that are going to go beyond that's why they instituted this regulation to kind of consolidate all of the different districts doing different things and have their you know an accountability factor that goes beyond a local

149board um um I was just wondering if we can in the interest of time if we can get the the administration asked us some really good questions if maybe we could get back to that and I think we hit reasonable that there's some suggestion that we tighten up that definition I guess and then I thought maybe we could go to the evaluating committee does the you know feedback on three people versus the whole board Miss Cas would you like to kind of I know that this is your presentation I took some notes and we can take this information and we can hopefully next time maybe try to come with a draft based on what you all are saying so that's kind of what we would like to do so that that's great um so this

150is the evaluating committee so the board has to decide if you want to have a three-person committee to hear hear the complaint first and then that be brought to the whole board or if you want the whole board to hear a complaint and make a decision based on the whole board now remember what has to happen in in a public hearing is that both sides have to have that opportunity so you'd have to have a public hearing where you can have the complainant would be able to present their case but then anyone that wants to speak publicly either for or against that would be able to do that as well so that would be your first question What I suggest doing with this is kind of going down the line because everybody kind of probably

151has an opinion on this one um I'm going to start with Mr Scully just because of my body is turned that way um my first inclination would be the full board okay Mr safield uh I'm going to uh vote against to Mr skelly's recommendation vote I want to I want to say if it's an elementary book it goes to this end if it's like Moby Dick or a 600 page book it goes to the other end no um I I like the idea of the three board member and a committee that involves again community members and teachers so it's not going to do that because the state so just three board members and that's it the options are three person committee a board members or the entire board well have is there have we talked

152about how the process will work do you do we read the book and review it or do we just hear excerpts from the book so I believe that that's also defined in the regulation that you're reading the what is actually being challenged it actually does not state that you have to do that what it does say is that the complainant has to have read it but it does not say it does not specify that in the law but I would say that we would want whoever isie to read the entire thing yeah I read a 700 page book yes me well I think in all fairness if it's something that is that important that the entire the book should be read in its entirety that's just me um again I would not look forward to

153having to Read Moby Dick tale of C but uh what we're talking about the committee like the con like who consists I'm trying to keep it uh I'm getting look understand I'm I'm in I'm in favor of three of three not the whole board okay Mr Snipes just because I missed the the beginning of this particular piece I just want to clarify that um the three person committee um are they presenting back to the board when the complaintant presents back to the board but and are they making but they're not making a final decision on behalf of the board they're just being Ted with presenting the the Viewpoint um I could I could support a committee that does that I personally think it's an unnecessary step I mean it's we're we're a committee of seven

154we're all duly elected to make these decisions some decisions are harder than others but at the same time these decisions need to come to a body of seven okay I 100% agree with that and also the one of the reasons why I think that is because even if you have a Committee of three that reports back to the board their recommendation that Committee of three has the ability to actually be there and hear and ask questions and the full board wouldn't have that and that doesn't mean and I feel like we all I feel you know it doesn't matter if it's this board or another board or 10 years this is a push back thing I don't I so I think that got lost in translation for me too right so because I still thought

155everybody had an opportunity to ask questions and what but if you're GNA have a committee meeting like if you have a committee of three hearing a panel they're probably going to do that outside of a regularly scheduled board meeting that's probably going to be if if not see I've never really understood because sometimes you have these boards that have these committees and then the full board will be there and then they break into a committee okay and only those three people talk about what's going on and the rest of the board's sitting there I changed my vot I misunderstood I feel like that's weird weird I changed my position um I just you know that's kind of strange but I mean that's why I feel like I want to be able to ask a question

156BEC You know especially because we are elected it can get political even if it shouldn't get political and you might just not agree with one another Miss huddle what are your thoughts on this I agree with you completely you sound so surprised I know um I would like I would though another reason I agree with you is that if whoever those three people are selected if they're chosen out of a hat there's still a minority of the board so the other reason I agree with you is is then you get well let's say they said um to um do away with the material or change the material and then the bo full board rules differently now you just have another conflict right and it's just not necessary right it yeah wrap it up do you

157agree with me Miss Barnard I do agree with you miss miss um but I because of that fact I mean we if we were a larger board and had more and just to kind of delegate I could see that but there's seven of us we all work together and like you said we're all dually elected um and it just makes sense that if we're going to create this this process in general that we we do it as a full board um yeah Miss Hines Mr Scully I went first so technically AG with me because you want to agree all right so did you kind of pick up what we were all throwing down gotcha I I'm going to summarize that the majority of the board would prefer the full board and it sounds like you

158would like somewhere in the board policy that you would have to read the material there definitely something related to what the challenge is I believe personally you should read what it is being challenged um I do have one quick question just on the pro process so the complaint is filed with the school um I'm assuming it goes to the district and then comes to us we review the complaint we read the material do we present our findings as at the next board meeting or how what happens that's the next slide so let's look at the next slide let's look at the next slide you have 90 days from the time that the the complaintant would have to fill the form out which is the kece that you have that's the state form nothing really to

159discuss because the state says we have to do that one so that form would go to Miss White and you would have 90 days to actually hear the hear and make a decision based on that okay so if we go to the next slide um we're gonna we'll go ahead and answer go to you Miss barnhard and then we'll talk a little bit about the first bullet so I'm going a little bit out of order just following your conversation but if you look at the fifth paragraph that's really in in the law it says if the District board finds that existing instruct stru materials identified in a complaint do not satisfy the requirements of this regulation The District board shall remove entirely or discontinue use of the materials for any grade level or age group

160for which such use is inappropriate or unsuitable or will make such materials available to students only upon receipt of the consent of a student's parent or legal guardian this is the part that gets a little bit confusing that we we need to talk about the board will announce its decision and will provide an explanation for its conclusion and decision either orally at the public meeting if such meetings are recorded or transcribed or inwriting the board's decision will be made publicly available within 15 days of the meeting which is a little unusual there because if you're going to make it in a public meeting if you're going to make your decision in a public meeting I don't know why it says make it available within 15 days it's it's available immediately so that's that's where it

161kind of contradicts itself there I would think that that is if you're going to provide an opinion in writing but if you got to have a public meeting well would you you'd have to vote in public right yeah so you would have your meeting probably the hearing in which the complainant and the district or you know whoever is um presenting their individual sides Mee I would interpret that just because it says um she'll announce its decision in that meeting if such meetings are recorded or transcribed or in writing made public so if there's for some reason districts that are not they always broadcasting their meetings if they don't have that then it would have to be provided that just isn't really relevant to us because we broadcast our meetings there all of our meetings are

162public if we had I cannot imagine a situation where we have some kind of Challenge and we do not have it broadcast I just can't I mean I just can't see that happening I don't think necessarily that we need a written opinion and I for what you can go on YouTube and hit play and see exactly what happened to to your point I mean I'm interpreting that as that's 15 days to publish the minutes you know to but the minutes aren't going to really I understand that but on on certain situations where they're not broadcasted live and they're not on YouTube where you can refer back to them you know see this policy in place to where you've got 15 days to approve those minutes to make them public I could be interpreting it wrong

163but yeah Mr saterfield and then Mr Scully yeah I just want to play Devil's Advocate just for a second um the um it says when making decisions to select or ret retain specific instructional materials it says you should use the following criteria the materials academic or educational rigor um the materials educational significance the validity the accuracy the objectivity the currency I'm not sure who's up for that um the finite availability of Library shelf space and whether the space occupied could be better spent on material with material with greater academic rigor objectivity accuracy educational Merit or quality now so that is to keep it that is to get it in the school and keep it in the school not for the challenge well it says when when making decisions to select or retain so if some

164can somebody my question is can somebody challenge material based on any of those yes yeah I want I I mean I I know you heard what I just read I want you to think about accuracy whether the the space could be you better used from for another book it's not I I know that we talked earlier let me just finish this thought because I'm old and I lose my train of thought um initially we were talking about how it was basically for sexually explicit materials at least that was the understanding but as I said before we got four five pages that as Miss barnhard said is so all-encompassing it's like it covers everything anything that could cross into the the threshold of a school and I'm I do hope and pray that you're right uh

165Miss Hines that we'd have very few if any U challenges regarding this um but it gets back to my initial comment that I hope that something is in this policy whatever policy we come up with that says that people have made a good faith effort to settle this matter with the teachers or with the principls at the school level um because I'll be honest with you I don't want to be the one that has to make this sort of decision as a Schoolboard member and it it can become very political unfortunately and the idea and I would I will Express this I'm concerned that this uh mandate takes away the uh I don't want say the authority but takes away the good judgment of a local school board I mean we're a local school board

166and we've been elected to serve our communities and do what's best for our kids but folks can challenge our judgment too and now take it to another level and I I'm personally I'm just not happy with that idea so Mr Mr Scully hold on Mr Scully yeah um Miss mccal to your point I think the the key to that is the act the last sentence that's not highlighted um the decision which needs to be published will include an explanation of how the board applied and complied with the the criteria and I think that's what needs to be published within 15 days so that may not come up and be made clear during a public meeting so I think that would in my interpretation of that it would be the chair that would need to kind

167of put that in writing you know what I think might be helpful um to add to this policy maybe like in the administrative rule part of this is like a criteria form for the board to use as they are hearing a case because I know when we had our book challenge we didn't have any of that because it a book had never come to us before there was no one that could give any um specific guidance we were kind of you know looking and researching how to handle it as a board ourself without policy to back it up and that's probably because it a book hadn't it hadn't risen to us before um so kind of to spell out those concerns um I think that like if we had a form that had like a

168checklist of the requirements of how a material was brought to District 5 in the first place and then also in this little um in this paragraph it does say that the board shall remove entirely the material or keep it available with parental permission and so I think if there's a form that had that outlines you know the criteria that we're using to judge a material um and to make a decision it would be good to also have a little checklist of what we think should happen does because you might not have to remove a book entirely if there is a way to implement parental consent I don't know just my thought I don't know if there's a something that could be drafted to see what that looks like in writing maybe we had something similar

169to that with our previous policy so we can take that same idea and just utilize the criteria set forth and put that in there so that's that that's okay that just wasn't really given to us when we did our um when we had our book challenge we didn't have a checklist um I think that would be helpful Miss barnhard um yeah just I I understand that the people who are listening to this or watching online or even the slide that we're seeing it says fifth paragraph that's coming from uh the State Board of Education policy that we were given so it's in our packet that we're reading off that like Mr saterfield just read off uh after paragraph three number c was I'm assuming where you were reading from um the academic educational rigor all

170of that the material designations uh the next paragraph actually inde it says in no event shall a school district's board's decision to remove existing instructional material or to reject the proposed addition of new instructional material be based primarily on or motivated by the district board's disagreement with or opposition to the viewpoints expressed therein so that's kind of a a guideline and parameter just off the top from the State Board of Education that's saying we shouldn't make our decision based off of political views or or whatever you know and once we kind of make that more finite in our own policy like you said with the form or whatever I mean I think that's the purpose of that is being stated in the in the model policy to say it it shouldn't be for political or

171personal or you know I think that should be in whatever I think that should whatever form we have and whatever policy we agree on there should be something to that effect um in there sure I mean from you know in my opinion okay um so that did that answer the questions for that that discussion question it did the only other thing and it this kind of leads to something some of the things that you all have already talked about it it does put the responsibility on the board in terms of the complaints been filed the responsibility of the board is to hear it do you want input from Administration going into that for instance I'm going to give you an example let's say this a CH a book is a book or material has been

172challenged and let's say there's a group of teachers that utilize that material do you want want us to have for you the standards that are being utilized with that book and what types of lessons are being used so that you can see from a perspective of the teaching points do you want to see what that material is being used for not so that so that you have that input as well as what the complaint is do you want that input from us I can go first I always want that information so yes Mr safield thoughts uh yeah um and now that you said I'm just trying to think as I go it might be um not only have if a if a teacher is challenged or school is challenged or a department or however it

173it comes to it surfaces it might be good to have something I don't know in writing or have somebody explain to the board um well that's what the that's what the that's what the what's the word the the hearing well I I understand the hearing but the hearing I don't first of all I don't know how the hearing is going to go I don't know if somebody going to stand up and in the public and read out all the bad words that they they don't want in they're concerned about or I think I think it's said that the complainant will say their side and the district will say their side well I understand it but uh I was not in favor of allowing folks to stand up and read the bad language publicly um there

174are books that have different offensive things and words that might offend some and not others I'm okay with them sharing with the board their concerns and expressing what their concerns are but I'm not sure that uh if there's something in there that's sexually explicit or racially charged or whatever it might be that it's appropriate to have somebody stand up in public participation and read in Theo all right so what we're doing right now is going one by one um to say if we would want the administration to give us materials prior to the hearing and that's what so I'm just I'm trying to keep us on track we don't and I apologize for getting on track I I just uh I guess I was trying to make a bigger point but I would like to

175have some input as to how it's being used educationally and not just at face value okay and that's what you were asking okay yes I guess my question is according to the law the policy we're not to give feedback the feedback comes from the community correct so we we would remain silent only the complaintant will present to the board the administration would be silent on that that is correct now the teacher can come in and if the you know if they choose the teacher could come in any both sides can come into that um we are not supposed to be necessarily involved in that hearing but you are hearing from the district professional that is being challenged they have the opportunity they have the opportunity to do that what what I'm asking is would you

176like for us because there are some teachers that are going to be more than willing to stand up here and be able to talk about what they do and then there's some this is just intimidating to them and they just don't NE they're they're more than happy to put it in writing and let us turn it into to you but they don't really want to stand here and and I don't I don't want to I guess that that's then we need to kind of clarify that as well because what what is being given to so I kind of interpreted um that question as and I I don't know if Mr Scully based his opinion on this or Mr saterfield or we haven't gotten through everybody else but um that that the administration or their proxy

177would provide would we want them to provide any kind of clarification or information prior to said hearing um or not not necessarily having a free-for-all anybody that wants to submit opinions it would come from you or uh you know um and all of that information or clarification would be Consolidated into like a one little packet or something that would be given to us within a certain period of time prior to because we have 90 days so you know the administration would have like I 30 days to prepare something to give to us as we prepare to hear whenever whenever we hear the I don't know is that what you were thinking yeah I I definitely want both sides of the issue whether and whether it's the well the complainants issue and their explanation and I

178want the other side whoever provides that so and I'm curious Dr Ross were you saying that the law does not allow the district to apply it does not require so in our current process and I'm just going to ask um M MCC to correct me in our current process once we get the complaint uh I set a Comm a committee and the committee comes together and they give the recommendation that recommendation can be appealed to the board and so we would have a district rep or whoever chaired that committee they would present one side and then the complaintant would present the other side and then you would have our materials uh of we provide that in the packet of why the committee made their decision and then the complaintant would make their decision and the

179board makes it in this policy can't that only the complaintant is is giv access to the board within that 90 days but the question is do you want a group to make a recommendation uh from the administration yeah if that's allowable under the law then I would like that because I think it's most fair to all parties okay and the sorry I'm sorry M MC you want to correct I don't think we can make a I don't think we can make a recommendation I think it has to come to the board for them to make that decision now we can provide for them the factual information of how it's being used but I don't think that we can provide a a recommendation I apolog recommendation I thought the explanation of it okay I'm going to

180go to miss snip I'm just trying to get everybody's feedback before Miss Snipes um what are your thoughts do you think yes I like the material um Mr Hogan do you need any of my time def finisher okay I mean yeah so um to Mr satterfield's point you know when when a book is challenged and it's brought to a public hearing you know we are tasked with the responsibility to to protect miners right the overwhelming majority of our students are miners and so if if there's a topic inside a book that's being challenged that isn't necessarily appropriate to read in front of a bunch of adults we might need to check if it's truly appropriate for the miners that we are protecting um when it comes to this question regarding the information that's provided I

181mean I think more information the better I think all the information pertaining to the the scope of the challenge um the libraries the books have been in to the extent of how many times these books have been checked out inside our libraries to what extent they're being circulated inside our schools prior us making these decisions but I do think the more information the better I agree with that I mean I think even in our own situation I I did my own research to put everything into context for myself because I didn't feel like I was getting that information and I wanted you know there's a lot of rumors that people were making decisions without reading books or knowing what they were talking about and that wasn't true because I was trying to figure things out

182and so it's helpful you know if that if we're given information to help with that and so I think that there should be but I do think Miss mccal did hit on a top uh something that I think is really important it's not when it gets to us we're not looking for an administrat A's recommendation we're looking to see what was actually in the school or what you know what the situation was and then we're tasked with making the decision it's not like a typical you know board decision where we do rely heavily on the administration's recommendation this this regulation was designed expressly with the board opinions and um you know and their decision- making abilities um so I think that it kind of undermines the intent of this regulation for us to rely on

183out rely on any anybody outside you know I think we're supposed to be a neutral party here so uh Miss huddle um yeah I agree with that completely I would suggest maybe a form for to give us information you know what what grades is it used for what classes is it used for is it in the library um what's the purpose of using it um you you know how was it curated whatever information so it's not opinion it's just information so that we get a sense for how and why the material came about um and maybe a place for other because whatever those things you want to tell us there's always going to be something that doesn't fit in a box like how did it get through the K process yeah yeah I mean from

184I mean from that's how you how it was selected like how was it selected yeah based off prior situations no okay did you get all of that feedback on that question I hav it I I've got it we're good Miss Hans can I make one other point yes I didn't catch earlier but um the the state's policy has um 90 days within receiving the complaint and it says within so I would think we could set ours lower and I'd like us to consider that just because these things ho hang over us like a dark cloud and so I would you know just from me suggesting maybe 45 days or something that gives us time to get it on the board agenda but not let it maybe that's three months that's a long time to hang

185out there so just a thought well maybe there would be some parameters because what if somebody made a challenge right before Christmas or you know I mean I agree 90 days seems like a I mean I think we what what is it 30 days or 60 days for our policy now I mean I think it was 30 could typically for the original committee to read it and then for it to come to us we had a certain period of time I I I think that three months is I think it I think I agree that that it might need to be a little bit shorter um depending on can I say if you left it within 90 days that doesn't mean that you have to wait till 90 days but if you have a thousand

186page book it may take you 45 to 60 days versus a child might not take you that long maybe the language of whatever policy expresses you know within 90 days but preferably 45 or or I don't know I I want the 90 days if I got to read war in peace give me 90 days oh my goodness um okay that's everything on this policy K KR anybody have any final thoughts and So the plan is the game plan on this is that Miss mccal for the next meeting y'all are going to have a proposed Consolidated policy that we may have to tweak and perfect but that so we see it all kind of together in how it would look correct and now that we have some input and we kind of know what you're looking

187for I think that will help us craft that and do you think you have enough time to do that before our next board meeting or should we push that to the second board meeting in September I'm asking because I know there's some other policies we want to talk about and you know just for the record just even putting policies on the agenda takes like a 30 minute discussion in a board officer meeting so I mean I just want to make sure our goal was we wanted another shoted discussion so we didn't want to tape move it to another agenda but we wanted to make the recommendations bring it back for another discussion uh as we talk about other policies coming up okay so but my question was do we think I'll put it on we're

188putting it on for discussion the next time yes ma' okay not a first reading no ma'am okay with your permission okay well you you had mentioned the funding situation so I just want to make sure right that we're not postponing it too long from correct and that's that's what I I I think we will um I think we'll have a better idea we've heard from the board now we want to hear from our principes on uh Wednesday so uh I know we have a um board officers meeting next Tuesday so what I'd like to do is hear from them if we're ready for first reading after Wednesday then we can come to that meeting ready for first reading okay but uh as as the practitioners I want to give them an opportunity to um lean

189into what you were saying tonight and um be able to make recommendation so we'll we'll have that recommendation by Tuesday okay all right so that moves us to the next fund policy yes this takes us to JK can I interrupt for a second here I would like with your permission Madam chair we may toggle between these two policies so permission to take these as as a tandem here the policy these are the supplemental 19 and 20 19 and 20 okay y just kind of like what we just did with uh KU and kucr yes reason with that and and the reason I want to share this is if there's one policy that's causing a a lot of concern from our teachers and our administrators it is the current uh it's the JK policy um JK

190policy has the language um that um the principal must approve supplemental materials and I think it's important to understand why this is causing issue uh with our with our principls and our and our teachers um I think going back to the history of this policy um the additions or or changes that were made in October or December 2013 uh was to split this policy into uh into two different policies so to understand the split you have to go back to 1986 and so in 1986 um the sentence the principal must approve uh it was not supplemental materials in that policy it was the VHS tapes um this was a copyright policy in 1986 and so if you think about what the principle did in 1986 it was I think it was like three TVs in

191the whole building you had to will them down to the to to the classrooms and any material that was rented or purchased or uh any VHS could tape that was rented or purchased uh was actually approved by the principal um in 2013 when this policy was separated uh it was actually brought by our CFO because this was about purchasing ing materials and not violating the copyright two policies were created one was in um our business policy and the other one was JK the reason I wanted to take both of these at the same time is that the law requires us to have a j JL policy sub um within our I within our ke um not all districts have an JK so we're one of few districts in the Midlands that actually have an JK

192so we really don't need both we can kind of combine them to one or take the igl and incorporated into our JK there's an assumption that a principle approves every piece of material that enters into a classroom there's two principles that have up here in this table and I can tell you that doesn't happen didn't happen in 1986 didn't happened in 2013 we have some classrooms that don't even have textbooks a lot of electives to think that a principal with 100 150 teachers with three different sections are approving every piece of material that enters into the classroom that whoever wrote this Pol that didn't happen so what we're trying to do is comply with that um and so we have made a recommendation I know it is shifting a lot of practice for teachers because

193if you don't have a textbook you don't have a curriculum you you create all every day um 90 minutes 50 minutes of instruction per class you're creating this and there is no one person that reviews all of that it their entire class is supplementary so as a result um for our teachers that are watching for our principles that are watching this I know it's a shift in their practice but when it's leveraged that well it was in your policy I want to understand how this originated there is no one person who has reviewed every piece of material uh website uh magazine that has come into that that was the that was the duty of the teacher um now if it was controversial there were some some some items with that so uh We've made a

194recommendation i' like to Mr MCO would kind of walk through it um of how we're trying to bring our practice into into policy Mr MC so Dr Ross just going off of what you were just talking about the policy that was from 1986 that did transition a statement that was in there that I thought was pretty interesting it says selection of appropriate supplemental materials shall be made by the principal or director of each school from recommendations by faculty members so the staff members the original intent the staff members recommend to the principal what to purchase and then the the principal then purchases and that approval used to be signature on paper for purchase orders it's not like IV where we could go in and digitally approve it it was signatures on paper for purchase orders

195so that was the original intent of the law so there has been lots of discussion um I've spoken with um PSTA we had a a legislator reach out there's been lots of discussion about this there's a lot of angst with teachers there's a lot of angst with principls I spent two hours last Thursday on our um day that we had for um weather I had two different Google meets for an hour each one with Elementary one with our secondary just talking through the re ity of this because they know that teachers in a grand World teachers have a week of lesson plans at a time they certainly have a big year-long plan but they write their plans a week at a time in order for a principal to truly think that they're going to even

196approve big topics even within a week's time a teacher is not going to be able to to teach that content if they have to wait on the principal to say this is I'm approving this and and that was weighing heavily on our principles and we talked a lot about what the law says what this says what's black and white what's gray and how do we live in the gray um but ultimately the most important thing that I heard from everybody that I've spoken to is the importance of the professionalism of our teachers and how do we value that and how do we make sure they understand the value that we place in them and also not put them on the hot seat of an Island by themselves because in these days and times I don't

197want to be by myself when I started teaching in 1990 I started teaching with I taught sixth grade music seventh and eighth grade health and seventh and eighth grade PE that's what I talk had not a single textbook but I made all those decisions by myself even for seventh and eighth grade health I made those decisions by myself nobody approved it nobody did today in the society that we live in today I don't want that responsibility I want a team around me to help me know where are my blind spots what did I miss because I'm focused on I need this content I need this content I want it for my kids this child needs this and this child needs that but my team helps me see the blind spots and what I might be

198missing what is another perspective that might see this and so the procedures that you see that are outlined on the second page of igk for the proposed policy talks about a process where the principal still has input But ultimately the teachers profess professionalism is honored and so we would use their PLC or their Department as their team and they would present this and and those five things that Mr sail pointed out those are straight from the law of the criteria that we would utilize to look at the materials and make sure that they are abiding by the law if there's no question there and the team approves it then that material can be used if there's any question at all then that material would then go to the API who would then go to the

199principal and talk through that to see what see what needs to happen with that now the academic freedom policy says all controversial material goes to the principal that would still remain if you're talk if you've got a if you've got a Content that's deemed controversial then that material would then have to go to the principal for for approval that makes things manageable for for for principles it allows our our professionals our teachers to be professionals and it gives them support around them with what they're making decisions of so that's what we're proposing now the other changes are just updating things like film strips which we don't have film strips anymore um so that's just updating that list but I'll stand for questions on the proposal can I ask uh since you were you brought up

200the second page of The Proposal policy um I have a couple of questions regarding that process um because are the I'm trying are the plc's and Department teams are they already regularly meeting so this would not be a new committee for teachers okay so it wouldn't add any additional birth to discuss all of their supplemental materials within these teams I'm not going to say it won't add any additional time but as they're planning together and talking about their materials it would be fairly natural conversation around the materials that they're using so under this policy if you're going to use videos websites um any of those types of materials that are constantly I think that's probably where we see the most problems with you know how quickly information changes that's the difference between now and 20

201years ago um and that would be what I could see would be problematic from a you know if it's overly burdensome to a principal or even this team I mean with but this policy would still say every time you want to use a website every time you want to use YouTube every time that you have to bring it to this team and this team has to sign off on it before you use it in your classroom is that unless unless it's something off of our district Frameworks so our district Frameworks our curriculum they those things have already been vetted and approved so if it's something outside of that then that's where you would have to make sure that you're bringing those things to your team so well and that's what the supplemental policy is about

202what hasn't been vetted already by the district that you're just bringing in because I mean I've had a you know I've talked to a history teacher who said who talked about bringing case law when the case law decisions are being changed or The Federalist Papers you know what's approved under a standard or not you know that's a common sense you would think that that would be you would want to bring that in websites and some other materials are a little bit different and I would just think that that's what this policy is intending that yeah you a website or you know like those things that just change so so much that's not necessarily going to be you just can't bring that in without getting it approved is that and what you look at today could

203be different tomorrow on a website so that's what teachers have to be very careful with well and that's what I'm saying I mean that makes you question whether or not you should be using certain websites or things that do change all of the time because it does create that's why we're even discussing these policies is the information available now and the way that it you know changes and that is something that's that's right new to us now I mean all right um I don't think Mr saterfield has anything to say Mr saterfield yeah um thank you that's a great explanation of what teachers and principles do go through and uh I learned very early on as a principal that I was not the smartest person in the building if you sit in in a AP

204Physics class or you know you're there and you hope they just you just hope they don't ask you any questions um it it's I think there's this perception that if I teach ninth grade English all ninth grade English teachers teach the exact same thing and they don't they teach the same standards they're expected to follow those standards the state standards but if my class is a lower level class or it depends on the mixup of makeup of my class I might go at a different different pace I might look for different resources and that's what we expect teachers to do that's what you want for your children you want teachers that are intelligent and are trying to meet the needs of their students I I think this is a I like this policy because you

205don't ask it's not fair and it's not reasonable to expect the principal to be able to approve everything that that they use as far as supplemental materials um there will be times when teachers May um talk to uh their Department here on the hall and say look I'm G to I think I'm going to show this TED Talks I think this will help pull together that my kids are struggling uh with a certain concept or something like that um I don't I I I wouldn't want this to be a formal or us to perceive it as a formal stepbystep procedural thing for teachers that's just like saying we don't trust you we don't trust your professional judgment and imagine being in I don't care if you're an elementary middle school or like you were saying

206you didn't have a book high schools students take a lot of electives I know that you all know that you remember back when you were in high school um I had a teacher that taught the history of Vietnam there was no textbook and every day he was the only one who taught that course I mean the other teachers didn't have a idea or what he was teaching um so he I expect he was a great teacher and and he did a great job with that course so we have to be very careful not to think that we're supposed to map out every step that teachers take does that make sense we need to we need we need to I understand the premise behind wanting to make sure everything is appropriate and that's that's good there's

207no nobody I don't think anybody questions that but you need to give the teachers the freedom in the leeway to meet the needs of their kids and not be too overly restrictive and and um teachers are professionals we should treat them as such Miss hle um I think the the reason why this um regulation got passed is because there were controversial things going into curriculum um and I get not putting all that weight on the principal and I get trusting the teachers who teach the subject but I feel like if we're going to I think the intent of the policy even the school board's model policy it has options for the reviewer and those options are the principal or assistant principal they're not a teacher committee now I'm fine with the teacher committee personally but

208I think if we're going to do that we've got to put some more meet into here about controversial items and I don't think it's good enough just to say we have this other policy because I mean we've had problems with this um and it and changing this policy as recommended would not have fixed that so I think that's our our should be our goal is is to um not repeat um past issues so that's my only suggestion is if we're going to go down that path let's um beef up the the process for making sure that things are not um political or um controversial I mean we've had issues with Brain Pop I've heard all and I don't even know if that's used anymore but just you know making sure that if we're going to

209use material that that lens of is this purely academic and not any kind of other stuff in there just let me let me just let me just respond to that just real simply I think I can help clear the air with some of that um I understand there are always an anomaly I if I don't care if you're in the medical field legal field electricians plumber there's always there are always situations that do come up but that's what principles are for that's what administrative team is for if there's a situation A an isolated situation then you address it in the best manner that and you give the principles and the team the opportunity to address it but I remember my first year I sent out an there were there I don't remember the situation but

210I sent out an email to everybody on staff to make sure everybody was doing and boy did I get some feedback from that they said are you kidding 98% of us are doing exactly right you sent everybody an email because we're professionals you sent everybody an email because of two people in the whole building there are hundreds of people here so I understand what you're saying every now and then you're going to have to have an isolated issue that you'll deal with I'm sure that M barnhart's had people that work with air conditioning and maybe they're reliable and maybe they're not um that's okay but I don't again I would just want to be cautious that we don't relay to teachers that because of an isolated incident or something that you hear about on the

211news that we need to establish all a policy for everything to address such a thing that's my point Thank you so I strug I'm struggling with this one on how you even revise it or not because I really feel like there needs to be some kind of accountability provision even this doesn't really have an accountability provision when the original policy which has been in effect since 2013 this is not like a new thing that we are just like trying to be Sensational and and draft uh um you know the principal had the authority in this policy where there's a process which I think you when I first read the policy my led to my questions to you I mean I hear like the reason why we don't want to have the principal account you know

212to approve uh approve materials is because that's overly burdensome well you hear from teachers all the time that they don't have enough time to do plan their lessons you know for all of these meetings that we put on them you for and honestly I feel like I don't want to put more on the teachers I mean I mean an administrator you know you have that man managerial role like that kind of plays and that is not to take away from how much our principles are doing and and I and it offends me honestly to be to hear well you're you're not you're not taking in account what your administrators are doing I do I really feel like everybody is probably overworked it is it's not a slight um it's so easy to misspeak and have

213your words just twisted around I'm not trying to say that but teachers always say they're always creating papers are always trying to plan lessons adding another committee or a long you know longer requirements for a committee I'm hesitant to do that as well you can't you kind of can't win but there does need to be some kind of measure of accountability and at the end of the day and Dr Ross you did mention and and I think that that's a point that I didn't consider and it's a good point about you have electives that aren't necessarily they don't have approved textbooks and their supplement Al materials that create their class but there's got to be an approval process to create that class like you don't just like create a class and nobody's looking at it

214and you know um and that had there is no oversight on that there's already an oversight procedure for an elective I would I mean and and for that so that's a little bit different than what we're talking about as we're trying to address this policy um at the end of the day and this is going to be a very unpopular opinion I am sure but for all of our core classes that are covered under State Standards we have books and we have materials for teachers to use and if they choose to use supplemental materials to help out in their classroom there should be an approval process for that I don't feel like we're we have so many so many request I mean you're how how do you have so much time to you know that

215may I understand that some teachers may not operate that way but what if we were to say hey we should get rid of the academic freedom policy and we should get rid of the supplemental material policy but let me let me just share this with you do that teachers do not just teach from the textbook I I they just don't they are they are right now there are teachers at 10:00 at night that are looking for materials to be used in their class I am not saying that that is not a true statement I'm just saying that I believe that there should be some kind of accountability measure that I don't see in this that's that's just my opinion I don't know I mean um you know if I share some context and I I

216do appreciate that I think one of the things is I'm just looking at it from a practitioner we we tried that before so um when this first came out the question was all right how do we get this with some some vetting embedded into it and all materials because this is not just core it's everything that's that a child sees in the in the building is going to have to go through this process so that's when we gave it to the the principal is kind of as looking at it if it's outside of what's already approved and uh one of the things I got a call about was the principal says well right I need 10 days then I need 10 days to review everything because I'm getting it from 60 different teachers or 120

217different teachers and and then the teacher said well that's an undue burden on on me because of it slows down my my planning so to try to speed it up we came up with with this process we recognize it's a shift for all it's going to be a shift for the administration it's going to be a shift for the teachers one thing that hasn't shifted since since 86 though was the Preamble of that policy is that we need the supplemental materials to enrich extend and and and and remediate because because right now we we're going to next week we're going to talk about the next Mee we're going to talk about the scores and the question is going to be Dr Ross what are you going to do to lift these scores up and one

218book is not going to do it with nine or eight different reading levels in those classes so this was kind of a happy medium not happy medium but this was a way we could try to get teachers with faster feedback uh but also I do think you know maybe incorporating in here that language are controversial so that they know that the principal still has to because if it's it's Bane then um we can it can turn around faster but if it is a situation that's outside of the um outside of the traditional standards every course is relying on standards are learning objectives but the materials that is what we always gave to the teacher to to meet to extend enrich and remediate so that's just the shift that we're making now and I don't call

219ATT feel like I mean I I don't think I I I do believe that there are necessary supplemental materials I don't think that you know I'm being extreme and saying we could just get rid of all of them because the teachers are given materials and that is a very extreme statement and I'm just trying to prove a point that there that there should be some type of accountability process I don't know that that this is it but worries me the most about this policy is does it add more burden I mean are we going to hear from teachers that you're creating another committee and making me do more work when that wasn't the intent when we when we were discussing this necessarily so I'm going to give you a a little bit of opinion but

220a little bit of information from from a teacher pers perspective as well on that but first of all I'm going to give you the law so on page five of the law it's section 5A just so you know where the where the whole approval idea even comes from is is in section 5A where it says any new instructional material must be determined to comply with and satisfy the criteria set out in section three of this regulation prior to be made made available to students in the classroom School library media center or reading list so that is the statement of approval so it just says that we have to make sure that it complies with it doesn't say who has to determine that it just simply says that it has to comply so the process of

221teachers you utilizing a team to develop whether or not it complies does abide by the law I think whether or not teachers think this is one more thing or not depends on how it's set forth with the board I think Mr SFI said it well when he said it we can't think of this as a lock step process that we're going to check off boxes and we're going to sign off on the dotted line I personally can see that I've got a 20 minute break because for elementary schools that's their teachers are going to say we've got about a 20 minute break in I can see in 20 minutes I go and I say guys I found this video can you can you look over it with me really quick and within a matter of

222about two or three minutes they've looked at it the group says hey that's great I think I'm going to use it too or maybe I'm not going to use it or whatever but they've gotten approval from their team for utilizing that video they've they've gotten input from that if we approach it in that sense I don't think we're going to hear from teachers as saying this is an overburden to them because I think that's what they do naturally I do think it's going to we have some teachers that maybe feel like they're on an island like for instance some of our electives but what that's going to allow is our leadership Tuesdays where all of those electives from across the district come together into one place they can share there at that time and they'll

223have a team instead of being alone by themselves so I think it depends on how we frame it here as to how our teachers are then going to respond right anyone else M barnhard um I guess just as a whole I mean we talking about this as a as a large topic and obviously it is I mean we're changing policy and it's good that we are having these discussions uh because that's what we're here for as a board to do and I don't it's might not be comfortable it might not be the f part but it is what we are here to do and you know 20 years ago there's a lot of instances that we're seeing today isolated instances I guess you could call them you know that we weren't seeing 20 years ago

224we were they were unheard of and I think that the reason that as the State Department of Education nationally this is a discussion it's because of you know kind of since Co we've seen a lot of instances isolated instances that the parents the community members other teachers the the nation as a whole is kind of asking questions and so it's just good to get out in front of it and to make sure that we do have policy that fully describes exactly what we're what we're asking our teachers what we're asking our school boards what we're asking you know everybody who works in this area to do um and I'm I'm glad we're having this discussion and I'm glad that we're going to continue with these and the policies that we have next week as well

225but um I think there is a reason that we are having to have them but it's good that we are because then it just really gets down to the nitty-gritties of what we're expecting out of our school districts as a whole not just this one so that's just my two cents Mr SC yeah um I'll respectfully use your argument um to counter you uh as far as the accountability I I don't think teachers need account accountabil accountability in the policy their professional certification is their accountability their annual reviews or their accountability and regarding the frequeny of this issue I disagree we haven't had a lot of problems in this District in fact based on your interpretation you could say that we haven't had any problems and I know somebody referenced an incident in previously I

226never saw a problem with that um so I don't believe we have problems so to your point about how often is this actually going to happen to me it hasn't yet um and my question is how does how does a chalkboard or a whiteboard or an overhead escapes scrutiny here because anytime a teacher writes on the chalkboard that's a supplemental material so is a principal running down the hall every time somebody's writing on the board to duck their head in to approve it I mean what are we doing so it's we've got to let the professionals be Prof professional their accountability is their professionalism their certifications and the inst the the institutional credibility the district's credibility um through our our review process our performance reviews that that's how we hold teachers accountable they sh they

227shouldn't why are we holding them to or trying to hold them to higher standards than medical professionals or or any other industry where professionals don't have somebody constantly looking over their shoulder because they are allowed to be professional um and you know controversial issues are are you can make anything controversial um are are anytime a globe is in a teacher's classroom today that is controversial because some people think it should look like this so who's right I mean based on is that is should a globe have to be independently approved to be in a classroom that's a material so we need to give teachers as much Freedom as possible to be professionals so M Miss uh Snipes I just want to say Miss Masco thank you for all that is ahead with the policies um

228as you try to juggle what's coming down that we can't control mix with our feedback and comments I do not envy you and your team but we do appreciate this into barnhart's um I'm sorry to miss barnhart's comments um I am glad though that we are having the having the conversations and more importantly having them openly because I know we're all getting a lot of feedback some of it's varying some of it's similar in a lot of ways and I think we all want to do obviously we all want to follow the law but then we also want to do the best we can to support the teacher so we just thank you for kind of giving us some guidance on how to work that into the policies thank you so uh just to respond

229to Mr Scully since he addressed me directly um I appreciate I appreciate your comments because it gives me the ability to um provide some clarification of like how you have these conversations and things kind of get twisted a little bit just from the term accountability I agree like our teachers and and I have heard very a lot in the last last week about um you know about how important it is for our teachers to be treated as the professionals that they are because they are the professionals they are the ones that are in the classroom you should be able to all I me a teacher should be able to write on a chalkboard or that I guess we don't have those anymore because uh we have whiteboards and all of this smartboards they should be

230able to write and not have to feel like they need permission to do that that I mean that's such an extreme example when I say accountability and I think where I'm coming and I may be phrasing it the wrong way and and the concern that I have with the policy having these teams where it's collectively decided whe whether or not something should be a material should be used or not is like those outlier cases where something shouldn't be approved that is approved and a teacher that was not involved in that approval process using a material that later on becomes controversial because it shouldn't have been used or it wasn't used the way it was intended to be used um when you have a team and there there there isn't one person that says like you

231have this approval for contro probably more so for like the controversial conversations and and Dr Ross and Miss H are right like kind of firming up that language might help me be able to see this but I see this as what if you have a controversial team approv something that goes that intentionally or unintentionally May probably unintentionally goes against the spirit of the regulation and that's how it got in there wasn't like real approval I'm I'm just trying I'm really thinking out loud trying to reconcile that and I get the professionalism I'm listen I mean I am married to an educ educator who has probably different opinions than I do on this um who taught history and and there are a lot of materials especially like right now with changing you know with everything that's

232changing in the world that you want to supplement in a in a classroom I I get that I'm just that's why it's so hard to write policy because you I mean it it's hard to write the policy so that that does not mean at all that I don't that I don't believe that our teachers are professionals or that I believe this policy is something that would be used all of the time in a bad way or you know even 0.1% of the time we're just that's what we're charged to talk about all right Mr saterfield and last word yeah um but isn't it a shame that we live in a world now that you have to protect everybody's got a you got to have a policy a law or rule to try to cover everything

233teachers haven't changed over the years they've been doing this out of passion for students they have never have never done it for the money um again after 33 years of working with teachers and seeing some of the things they go through we talked about a situation today where uh you know it was almost dangerous for a teacher but they'll still come back and so I don't think that we should be so compelled and so focused on thinking that we have to have something spelled out exactly for every possible scenario because you raise kids I raise kids you can't cover every possible scenario I was on the district discipline code review um committee and every year we got together and we would have a whole new bunch of things that we wasn't in the discipline code

234before that kids found a way of doing so but that's just part of the process that's part of dealing with children but again I I think that we are getting too consumed with thinking that we have to cover everything and pinpoint everything again let the teachers leave them alone let them be professionals and just like we want to be left alone in our jobs so all right that's all and in closing I'll let Matt do his thing the hold on before that before that I do want to um we we did say we were going to kind of join with 19 and 20 but and we didn't really get into that and I what I will ask the board we can get in and go through it line by line but it seems that this

235policy is the model policy that was suggested and what has not been included in this are the job titles through like of who should be responsible for what function and what I would suggest that when we bring this back to the board that the administration provide that initial recommendation of who should be you know should the school library media specialist be the designate the superintendent design or should you know whatever that is or what do you or well what I was going to ask is I'm not I'll be honest I'm not sure jjl is necessary okay because if you look at it what jjl is doing is talking exactly what we've been talking about tonight it's saying that who's respons ible for selection of materials we were just talking about that um so I really

236believe that the language from jigl if we want to add something to JK we could or simply JK really is what jigl is it's outlining who's responsible for materials and who's responsible for making sure that that the materials are appropriate their educational rigor it's the same criteria that we've outlined in JK we could add some of that verbage because what we did was we put those five things in JK and then said and it's consistent with the selection criteria set forth in state board regulation 43170 which is these one two three four five six seven bullets that are in JL so we've kind of set it already in JK so I'm wondering if the board would like to consider one policy versus two policies to make sure that we don't because what I'm afraid of

237is if we use this igl we're actually going to contradict ourselves a little bit if we're not careful so that's does anybody disagree okay got it all right so we did recommend first reading for JK but it sounds like we just want to come back back for a discussion the next time is that what I'm hearing because we did recommend JK going forward as a first reading yeah I think probably we probably aren't there yet okay maybe if there's another discussion with some of that language included we'll try to combine IDE with it that's perfect Mr Hogan I've just got one question for Kevin a comment or Mr skull excuse me um is the world flat round I I want an opinion no okay just make sure I know if you're a flat earther or

238not I can go to 21 if you're ready yes like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting a second I heard Miss Snipes first I saw him and then I heard you so miss Snipes seconded any discussion all in favor motion carries 70