Williamson County Board of Education Meeting - February 15, 2021

001good evening my name is laura coughlin my address is three 3007 burlington pass that's in franklin i grew up in the nashville area and i have lived in franklin for 13 years i'm a wife to kent a mom to robert a 2016 graduate of franklin high anta cooper who attended williamson county schools from first grade through half of 10th grade he is currently in a private school setting for his junior year i've been a preschool teacher at mustard seed preschool and a substitute teacher within the williamson county system for six years i mainly sub in elementary special ed i wanted to speak to you tonight about why i'm involved in racial issues within our schools and our community and why i think it is important that williamson county adopt some policies and make changes for

002williamson county to be more welcoming to a wide variety of backgrounds beliefs and skin colors because i believe all people are made in god's image and are worthy of kindness and respect i've been involved with a couple of grassroots community groups for a couple of years mainly educating myself and helping to educate others about issues of race and racism in our community my son cooper and i were listening to public radio in the car after the last school board meeting and a story came on about racial issues brought up at that meeting not two sentences into the story and my son said oh if i was black i wouldn't send my kids to williamson county schools that shocked me and began a great discussion about what he witnessed as a student in williamson county what

003he thought should could be done differently and it made me want to speak to you tonight in the many parent teacher conferences i've had over the years yes i'm concerned about their academic success sure i care if they understood the material being taught but more importantly i'm concerned about how well they treat others around them are they kind and respectful to teachers and do they treat others with kindness williamson county is great at tooting our horns about our act scores our college acceptance rates our national merit finalists and other marks of great academic success i don't know the statistics but i have seen schools busting at the seams with people moving into our county just for that high academic standard but just as i wanted my children to be known for how they treated others

004i would love for williamson county to also be known for how their students faculty staff are treated i know this is not a solely a school issue schools can only do so much if our students are taught differently in the home and in the community but when racism and other forms of prejudice are witnessed and reported in our schools the schools have a duty to do something about it my son robert the 2016 graduate of franklin high was children thank you he was killed in august in the times with family and friends surrounding his memorial service and in the six months since then not one person has asked what his gpa was in high school not one person cares about his a.c.t score but there have been story after story of how he was kind

005to those around him how he looked people in the eye and spoke to everyone he knew everyone was worthy of kindness and respect everyone who plays their roles the role in our schools needs to know that too thank you so much for your time next is tamara greatly griffin hello thank you all for providing this opportunity williamson county schools has a reputation of being for being a top school system can you hear me okay yes did you state your address oh no i did not tamara gravley griffin 1165 penn oak circle brentwood tennessee thank you man other groups in this meeting are encouraging the school system to encourage it to ignore the racial issues that have occurred within williamson county schools i feel that 13 percent is a large number especially considering that african-american students

006only make up less than five percent of the student body in most schools in williamson county schools i encourage williamson county schools to have a uniform system to educate address and when necessary make intentional corrections to make sure that all students feel valued and safe we are educating our students to be glo how to be global citizens and thrive not only in williamson county but in the on the world stage we and this is we keep saying this and people i it disturbs me that it's become political for students to feel safe and i refuse to allow my voice to be shut down because it makes people feel uncomfortable this is the time when students are in school when they're around us we all need to have this dialogue we are not going anywhere we're

007not going to just move to davidson county we shouldn't have to just send our children to private school because our children are being called out being made fun of if it were your child we wouldn't want your child to to feel that way these are things that we need to take the responsibility to deal with that and in the school system because doing it at home then we wouldn't have this issue if it was happening at home correct i believe so 13 that's a large number i don't think that's a small number especially considering with african-american students you can literally count the number of african-american students in the yearbooks that's a large number and so i challenge everybody that's on this to really look in your heart and say what do we want to be

008known for because it really disturbs me it really disturbs me that is being called political there's nothing political about wanting every child in your community to feel valued that's not politics that's called being a good parent thank you for your time our next speaker is lisa churrich miss church oh okay can you hear me now yes oh great okay hi my name is lisa church 6419 annandale cove i am a part of a group of parents and teachers who believe the primary purpose of an education should focus on teaching the students the basics reading writing math science history items that fall outside of that primary purpose should be left to the families this includes teaching or indoctrinating students into any political perspective one of the earlier speakers talked about how there's not been any information

009released to families about how the school system would pay for the extra million dollars whatever we're going to pay for consultants in a budget challenged year when i looked at williams accounting open finance i found that our projected revenues are 529.59 million the approved budget is 6.26.96 million which is a shortfall of 97.37 million which means we're planning to spend more money than we have and at my house that means you don't spend it so how about your house where are we going to get the money to pay consultants for this unnecessary initiative why do we need to hire consultants when our county already employs a title ix coordinator and a 504 coordinator both of whose jobs have been in quote designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies that's a quote directly from the williamson

010county website we also have human resources williamson county employees that should be skilled in handling these issues along with the counselors in the schools there's been effectively no information given to the parents or families regarding the superintendent's desire to hire consultants on this issue all of this leads to the question why does the superintendent's office or the school board believe that we need to hire a team of consultants spend some money when we have no indication by the data that we have an issue again it was point zero zero zero two six were there thereabouts very very very small if this is a big issue inform us about the details of the proposal prospective consultants are usually provided a brief of engagement and a return must provide the cost with an explanation of deliverables in

011the selection process let us see this brief let parents and other people in the county vote on it in the may election if it's a good and necessary initiative parents in williamson county will vote for it everyone in williamson county will support this process in conclusion my friends and i reviewed three points first is this currently a goal for williamson county schools second is their racism issue third has williamson county communicated how we're going to pay for it the short answer is no this is not a goal for williamson county schools the math shows there is not an issue in our schools and finally they haven't communicated to us how they're going to afford this or informed why it's such a big issue we do believe the school system should provide equal opportunities for all

012students to succeed academically while providing a safe environment for students and teachers the data contin indicates williams county has done this incidents need to be handled what's 30 seconds time oh time okay our conclusion is we do not support this our next speaker is tahirah king excuse me everyone if i'm mispronouncing your names tonight no no worries it's tiger king i'm at 508 holbrider court and i just really want to thank you guys for the opportunity to speak on tonight in regards to racial equity and appreciate all the points that have been made previously and what i just want to continue to reiterate with this board is that it needs to continue to be a key focus it's saying a thing needed beyond just for for for black and brown kids but literally for for

013all of our kids and i know there's been many comments around math and what needs to be true here and i think it's it's it's an interesting thing around us talking the math because i think it also speaks to a bit of the lack of empathy in this space because oftentimes you have to be a person who looks like me to really understand there being a huge opportunity for that for me diversity is something hugely important diversity drives innovation it drives creative thinking it drives better ideas and it's indicative of the world that we live in today so it's something that i feel that we as williamson county should be so much more intentional in this space it's a big issue and we can continue to bring in the voices here to speak to the

014fact that it's an issue because i think we're at the point where we can no longer be quiet because it's impacting our kids i have two daughters we have two daughters that are in middle school and they're getting a wonderful education from it from a scholastic perspective but there's a lot of isolation that comes with being one of the few people of color in their classrooms on a daily basis so i think for us here what do we do and i think you really need to be intentional in this space we need to really have clear authentic in-depth well-thought-out plan of attack and it shouldn't just be an approach that we use by checking the boxes it needs to be changed that you know that you all are that we are intentionally at all levels

015from curriculum so the homework that's assigned black history by the way is american history why is it not incorporated same thing with asia native american why is it not incorporated and also the stories that we tell about black america it doesn't just have to be around poverty and slavery there are brilliant inventors skilled skilled people that happened just to be black and why not be able to tell those stories i know my daughter just worked on a recent project for art and knowing the only people that folks knew outside of her and she said she's a black girl is martin luther king so how do we go beyond that 30 seconds maybe 30 seconds okay awesome i think also as we look at changing our levels experience and representation so how do we ensure a

016diverse slate when we talk student government we talk clubs and organizations administration so let's have our administration look like what america looks like let's have diversity within our within our teachers our principals and even from a board perspective i just think really here we just need to be intentional and i think that's it as we look at be nice but it's be nice to me that means to be inclusive so we want to have everybody students not to be ignored and we need to celebrate diversity at all levels and thank you so much for the time our next speaker is jennifer cortez thank you i'm jennifer cortez and i live at 424 savannah way in franklin i'm here tonight to publicly thank mr golden and the board for your continued efforts to make our schools

017safe for our families of color and other minority populations i know it's difficult work and controversial i have to echo what ms griffin said it's not a political issue in my mind there's no indoctrinate indoctrination trying to that we're pushing for we simply want safety for all of our students it's a safety issue and if kids are not safe then they can't learn so as i mentioned in my comments earlier last year a local grassroots group has been formed to support these efforts and we welcome anyone to learn more about us at onewillco.org we welcome all viewpoints and we want to open up dialogue and help bring people together on this issue we were encouraged by your comments at thursday night's work session and we are eager to help support any expert hired by the

018district to create sustainable and positive change thank you for your time our next speaker is amia nottage hi good evening my name is ima a hunkai nottage i live at 718 greenhill boulevard in brentwood i'm happy to have a chance today to share my thoughts on the importance of racial equity in our schools my husband and i have three children the youngest is three and i hope that he'll be able to attend ees where his eight-year-old brother and ten-year-old sister are currently in third and fifth grade we moved to tennessee in 2016 from the northeast where i was born and raised i like others heard that williamson county was the best decision for schools and we moved to brentwood for this reason when my 10 year old was then in first grade while she had

019a wonderful first year for the most part i nearly fell out of my chair when i learned that one of their planned field trips was to visit a plantation i was shocked is this a thing in the south why were first graders who had not even yet learned about slavery visiting a plantation the objective i later learned was to learn about harvest ceremonies despite every objecting bone in my body i chaperoned the field trip i realized that i could not provide honest feedback without doing so and my experience there confirmed my fears in my opinion the only lasting legacy of learning about harvard's ceremonies on the backdrop of a plantation was to water down what the plantation itself represented this was not a fun place to learn to use a quill pen or a cool

020place to learn a line dance or make cider on this plantation human beings who looked like me and my children were enslaved held as property beaten and abused allowing kids to leave with this impression left a deep pit in my stomach i was relieved that the principal at ees was receptive to discussion and input from me and other parents it was clear to me that a diversity of perspective was missing the obvious connotations of this field trip for me and many other parents of color was not obvious to others this is just one example of the many stories i can tell you about my experience and that of my children at ees as they've gotten older the direct impact on my children has become moreover overt whether through macro or microaggressions or the lingering effects

021of structural racism we have reached a critical moment in this country where the importance of these conversations and structured efforts to ensure racial equity is being recognized in institutions across the united states minimizing the importance of this topic simply minimizes the voices of racial and ethnic minorities their families and their children it lacks a diversity of perspective a lack of empathy and an unwillingness to understand the essence of the minority experience in this country and the value of my three children this is not political the well-being of our children of my children is deeply personal in health care where my husband and i both work as physicians we are also championing these efforts but nowhere i would argue is this more important than the environment where we create and nurture young minds i urge the

022board to support a racial equity task force to place these as a central priority in our schools thank you and our final speaker tonight is wcea president laura clayman who is making a report i'm laura presenting as president of the williamson county education association i will be addressing the so-called race that our legislature voted to provide teachers this year most people and teachers would be pleased to see a raise for teachers but this is not what happened while i welcome any bonus i want to be very clear that what we are receiving is not a race and most definitely is nowhere near the reported two percent the amount that a first-year teacher with zero experience and a bachelor's degree will receive is only 1.1 percent of their salary a teacher with 21 plus years and

023a master's degree will see even less only 0.7 what our legislators did was increase the vep portion of the state's school funding for law by four percent or half a year from january to june on the surface that seems like a two percent race however these are non-recurring funds meaning our county will not get this funding again further our county only receives about one-third of the full bep allotment because tennessee uses a robinhood approach to provide more funding to less prosperous counties wealthier counties like williamson and severe must shoulder much more of the burden for educating our students the bep formula also only bases teacher salaries on a state minimum salary line with maximum class sizes to allocate the number of teacher positions the district may receive so with 100 kindergarten students the state will

024only pay for four and not five teachers meaning 25 students per teacher versus the 20 that williamson provides tennessee has the funding to provide more to our schools and teachers as the administration reported a 369 million dollar surplus at the end of the 2020 fiscal year and has already collected 1 billion more than anticipated in the first five months of this fiscal year the funding that will pay for the teacher bonus came from a surplus in the tennessee assistance to needy families program also known as food schools i encourage everyone to remember tennessee surpluses as teacher raises are discussed in the legislature i also challenge everyone with a graduating college senior to closely examine the commencement handbook notice how few students are graduating from the college of education compared to other colleges my daughter graduated

025from the university of alabama this december 32 lots of 44 pages of student names only one contain the name of future teachers we must do more to attract and retain our teachers thank you that concludes our public comment for the evening and we will now move to the approval of tonight's meeting agenda does anyone want to make a motion to approve moved by elliot mitchell motioned by mr mitchell is there a second rick wimberly second wimberly seconds is there any discussion if not we will move to a voice vote thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash and cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskas brad fiskus yes gina priya anna priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland do you like cleveland yes candy

026emerson candy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no you board members the next item on tonight's agenda is the approval of the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve so i moved mr dan cash makes the motion is there a second spending pre a second miss apria seconds is there any discussion if not then we'll move to another vote ms glenn please thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes ginapria sorry jenna priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland cuba cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick

027wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy gareth nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no thank you board by improved by approval of the consent agenda you've approved the following items the approval of the january 19th 2021 school board meeting minutes and the following board policies for second reading chart the charter school application policy personnel health exams policy the acquired immune deficiency syndrome policy and the hepatitis b policy and now we'll move to communications to the board and go to our superintendents report from director golden thank you madam chair i want to first thank all the folks who came in as public speaking you know there's been a long tradition of public speakers in in our community and i know that he how we communicate evolves over

028time and we get a whole lot more emails than than what so many of you got back back when this whole thing started when we made sure that we allowed our community to speak publicly so i want to thank them i'm going to give you a brief reminder of what we talked about at our work session and then and then finish up with some some new things that developed over the last couple of days so first just for those who didn't watch our work session i want to let them know that we talked about really four things one was our winter screener data for our did they gave us some insight into our student performance and where they were second we talked about the special legislative session that was that was over the course of

029january and then finally we gave some description of our inc of our on-campus instruction related to coving i'm not going to go into those details again in any significant death but i do want to encourage folks to pull up our website and look through that work session if you'd like to review some of that so the short version is with our winter screener data we see that we've made some pretty good progress with our elementary students when we when we study how our screener measures our student readiness for their grade level of work from the fall screener to the to the winter screener so we've been pretty pleased with that and we also know that we've really had a focus on our current first graders those were the kindergartners of course last year who were

030who were out of school last spring so we know we have a lot more work to do in every single day instruction matters in williamson county schools so again i'd refer everyone to some of that detail that they can see second we talked about the special session of the legislature one of the items on tonight's agenda is directly related to part of what the legislature did in its special session for education and that is the teachers pay reference i do appreciate miss clayman for for speaking to some of that detail with the legislature i will tell you one detail that that i want to emphasize is when she talked about four percent it was actually one half of two percent that the legislature put into the instructional component of the bep and as you know

031from our work session that what we have done in consultation with wca leadership is taking that money and equally divided it among our professionals who fit into that instructional component of the bep and that's that's what you will see on on our agenda for a vote miss clement got it right it's a one-time payment from the legislature i certainly appreciate it but every time the legislature funds especially pay with education i think it's important especially here in williamson county for us to point out that our county bears the majority of support for our school system and our county commissioners have that responsibility to fund once you all determine what what what what is appropriate based on our vote from a budget perspective so it is quite limited but it is a what i think of

032as a gesture from the legislature to acknowledge that for for our teachers and again you'll see that a little bit later in the agenda next thing i mentioned and we talked about last thursday was on campus instruction and some coveted related issues we've been pretty pleased these last four weeks with with how i think the phrase i used was how we've turned a corner with our students being on campus every day is a challenge still we still are having positive cases in quarantines but but the but the numbers have gone down and largely for these last four weeks we've been able to keep keep our goal which is if if we can safely have school on campus we will do it and so again we'll be working on that on a daily basis but one

033of the things i wanted to to just repeat that i talked about at the work session was our community in their and you know they're being careful even while off campus and i think that's been a help to us in making sure we're still on campus with that being said as we sit here today if anyone looks at this in a few years and i'd be i'd be surprised if they did it'd be important for me to tell them we have a little bit of snow outside we've had one of the larger weather events that we've had in a number of years and today was not a student day it was a teacher work day we were able to do our teacher professional development day virtually those pd days those professional development days are built

034into our calendar and it actually if we had not done it would actually officially count as an inclement weather day which would in turn have to be made up because of our obligations for for professional development and so we were we were able to do that remotely with our teachers i'm so proud of our teachers and the work that they did i think if anybody's been out it's pretty obvious why we didn't do that on campus we have a layer of ice with some sleet and or snow on top of that and then another layer on top of that so we made a decision today and announced that we will have inclement weather days the next two days which is tuesday wednesday there is some indication that things might get a little bit better on

035wednesday but i got to tell y'all it's not looking good we're gonna we're giving it a chance but we did something really unusual in closing for two days but one of the things we're going to especially look at is whether we have the capability of of providing our inclement weather sites for for our school-aged child care at the least when when thursday hits but if something unusual happens and the some concern comes out we wanted to leave that possibility open but we also wanted to make sure that our families could plan especially for child care these next couple of days related to that we have built 10 days into our instructional calendar and i know a couple of you as board members have asked me about that now when i say we built those in

036we give extra instructional time over the course of the year to to to in essence create those 10 days after this coming wednesday we will have used five of those 10 days for inclement weather and i know one of the questions that you all asked is there a possibility of us doing remote instruction related to weather that is a possibility you know the the discussion we've had over the course of this year is long term because we're developing these tools there is a likelihood of that what we wanted to make sure that we did especially with this with this event coming was honor our family's expectations and the commitment we made when we created this calendar that we built in those extra instructional days i do believe that long term that there will be some

037evolution of that but from a from from a from a safety perspective and from a planning perspective we've we've we've built those days in and we're using those right now i will tell you also that some of our neighbors across tennessee are looking at things differently some of our neighbors actually started school late this year because of covet and consumed all their inclement weather days and are needing to do that but for us we do have that flexibility at least for the next few days we don't know what the weather what the future is going to hold the rest of this winter and it is possible that we may end up needing to do a virtual day i do know at the least that will eliminate us or virtually eliminate us needing to extend the

038calendar into the summer like we've we as school administrators have always known as a possibility if we consume all those days i felt like it's important to mention that to you because i know you all had some questions about that i do want to encourage everyone to be safe so we've told our staff don't drive don't drive into the schools don't drive into the offices right now and our safety our safety staff will continue to work on that i also want to let you know that from a vaccine standpoint we are continuing to monitor where the state is and communicate with the local health department i am not at the stage of saying i'm going to hold my breath until the vaccine's made available to to our faculty and staff but but i'm looking forward

039to the possibility in the in the in the next few weeks because i know they're serving the next step right above us with that vaccine many of our faculty members and i'm thinking probably in the low hundreds have gotten the vaccine at other locations we have about 3 600 employees who've told us they want the vaccine when we're able to administer it so i believe that's going to be another corner when we turn that and the final thing i want to mention to you is the final thing we talked about at our work session last thursday in in something that we've been talking about regularly this school year and that's what was discussed largely by those members of the community improving how we serve our diverse student body and i'm actually pleased that we had

040those public comments because you know that we've been talking about this really throughout this school year and we didn't get a lot of public comment early on but i think the word is getting out that this is an issue that this is an issue that we've been discussing and so i'm happy that our community is there and i want to emphasize that i mean we are a great school district you all know it you heard some of the examples from some of those folks who made public comment we have a really good strategic plan many of you here participated in in developing that strategic plan i participated in it when i was the deputy superintendent in developing that strategic plan it is true that diversity and race questions and race issues are not mentioned in

041that strategic plan as i mentioned to you i've heard from some folks that at that time there was not comfort in in being able to speak to that in those in those meetings that we had and frankly we didn't realize it at the time that that was where we were but what there there has been a change in in in the way our students communicate with us i have heard that from some of our students and some of our young alumni that while this is a while they did have a really good experience with wcs there were some examples where that experience wasn't so good that for some of them especially our students who were minorities that they that they experienced that they experienced discrimination some of it's subtle some of it not so subtle

042i've heard that some of it went reported and some of it did not go reported i have heard from individuals that there were times where they didn't feel safe in our community and you all know this because we've been discussing this what i do know now is that those students and even some of those young alumni have reached a point where they're comfortable telling us that has been their experience from time to time and i've concluded we have a responsibility to help grow that so that experience for all our students that we're so proud of is available and i tell you we've done some things over the years we've done some professional development we've brought in speakers we put policies in place and what we've learned over the past few months past year or so

043is that those points of growth haven't fundamentally changed those reports that we've heard from students about about feeling safe all the time and being comfortable reporting we've looked at that at the statistics those statistics are actually reported on the state's website and they have been conveyed to you accurately but what we know is that not all reports have actually been made not all incidents have gone reported and you know you all know from the time we've discussed this that some of the some of the work that we did to try to grow this on our own may have set us back from time to time and i've concluded that we do need that expert hell if we're going to make some sustainable and substantial progress for our students so we talked about bringing in a

044consultant to help us grow and have a have a plan somebody with some expertise in this who can give us an insight from you know other than from staff members who have been working on this over the course of over the course of years without that significant significant change and so we have brought to you really for the second company to ask you to approve a plan a consultant contract later on in this agenda and we had a lot of discussion with some really good robust discussion about this at the work session and so i want to make sure that everyone hears one of the one of the additional pieces of information that we gave you after your request on thursday and fostering healthy solutions gave us a summary of their initial steps where they're

045going to start number one with initial orientation and training they're going to have an introductory meeting with the board do some initial board training and then executive leadership training for us to help us second they're going to review our policies they're going to review our procedures related to bullying discrimination and harassment and our disciplinary measures you know we put some policies in place and i have over the years talked about our good policies this is going to give a different perspective so that so that so that somebody outside can look at it they're gonna provide us guidance and resources for our administrators and teachers and they're they are going to help us to find words and actions that may result in disciplinary and disciplinary action when used on school grounds and we do discipline for

046some of that but again we're going to get a perspective that's going to help us make sure that we grow how we serve those those those students third there they are going to establish advisory groups that include former or and or current administrators faculty staff parents students and community members to lead diversity equity and inclusion efforts so that's you know they're talking about the scope of our community the scope of our stakeholders and getting them involved they also gave us a blueprint for the additional scope of their work to follow those initial steps number one they're going to establish some benchmarks for success based on those conversations we have with with our stakeholders they're going to summarize the data and feedback that the stakeholders give us as part of that and identify those issues they're

047going to review those results with me and with our with our leadership team and help us identify priorities based on what is shared and then they're going to design strategies for us to plan and to set goals for implementation and execution of what we learn and then of continued training directed to meet the goals of that plan with all with all our stakeholders with focus groups administrators faculty staff and of course students so i know that was a big issue for many of you as we talked that we want to know where we're going to start i also want to hit a couple of of fact points the this contract is is for this current budget year for fifty five thousand dollars i don't know where the million dollar discussion came from you know we

048did talk about a million dollars in or so in matching that 450 proposed payment to our to our teachers that's the only thing i can imagine where a million dollars came up other than some capital items 55 000 for this budget year is the is what this consulting contract is for on paper i have an obligation under our board policy to bring to you any consultant contract that's for ten thousand dollars or more and i tell you my predecessors have sometimes gotten professional development in this arena for just under that i'm looking for something that is more thought out something that's more sustainable so that we can find a way for those students who have finally gotten the courage to say they did not feel safe or they weren't comfortable reporting incidents to help grow

049how we serve them another item i want to mention that was that was alluded to by one of the speakers we actually and it's and it's not directly related to to to this discussion at least from my perspective but i think it has the potential to be over time we have had students just in the past year expressing some interest in african-american history and there is a state course and so we are adding that african-american history course to next year's curriculum at three schools due to student interest many of our of our electives at each individual school are based on student interest and so ravenwood centennial and page high all have that course as an opportunity for folks to sign up and i didn't intend to mention that in what i was talking to you

050about from a superintendent's perspective or the million dollars but i felt like it was important for you to hear both of those two facts just so you can you can be fully informed as to as to the perspectives that you heard from the individual speakers i will tell you also every one of our community members and every one of our speakers that i've talked to they are sharing their experiences and those experiences are real those experiences are genuine those who told you that their students have had unbelievably great experiences i know they did those who have told you that they're that their children have have had those moments of struggle i know they did i trust what they tell us and i think it's time for us to try to do something more coherent in

051in in doing some planning to help grow it so madam chair that's that's my report i appreciate so much and i've said this before really i think just last month when we were facing the the week of celebrating school board members thank you all for your volunteer work i know you get a tiny little bit that in my opinion basically covers basically covers some expenses but what you're doing is in helping lead our community is a labor of love in my in my view not any different from the labor of love our teachers give our students every day so madam chairman opened any questions we do have one question from mr mitchell thank you madam chair mr golden can you spoke about the school district being selected to administer vaccine shots can you do we

052have an eta on when that might occur well i will tell you the health department has been very careful not to give a specific eta i'm talking about our local health department because they receive vaccines from the state so they're very careful not to i would like to defer to mr anderson who is directing our health and safety efforts to share as much detail as he can based on that yes thank you this is gary anderson what we have heard so far is that there may be an announcement coming soon that the whole state will be able to move into the 1b category when that announcement is made then we are very hopeful that we will be very quickly after that receiving our doses to move forward with our vaccinations we've heard this should be

053by mark by the beginning of march no later than the beginning of march is our hope so if i may add a little bit to that for our planning purposes we have like i said about 3 600 folks who are looking to to get the vaccine and when we talk about 1b for schools it's everybody who works for a school full-time part-time substitute teachers school board members everyone who works for for for the for the school system in some way somehow and we are going to be handling to sign up for our people through sign up genius so we're actually going to be sending an email did i get that right gary sign up genius yes sir that is correct okay so we're going to be actually sending an email to our folks to say

054that if you'd like to click on sign up genius and register it actually makes it easier for you to sign up for the particular times once we're able to post those so that will be coming pretty soon you don't have to register with sign up genius to be able to use it but it just facilitates it makes it a little simpler as i understand it from from the folks related to the app i wish i could give you a specific date and time as soon as that announcement comes we'll be able to and gary i'm going to add something else that i think is a little bit of an educated guesswork metro nashville is not part of the state health department you know our locals are actually state employees but some of the large metro

055areas are actually their own health department not directed by the state they announced that they are going they believe they're going to be able to start teacher vaccines if i'm not mistaken gary on february 22nd if i have the date right right around there if they've announced that implies to me that the volume of the vaccines is such that they believe they can go to 1b so i'd be surprised if we weren't right in that date area somewhere in that in that range of time but gary said march i think he's being i he's probably being more appropriate than me because i don't want to build up hope if it's not there but that's that's that's what i'm hoping for do have a couple of other questions miss durham thank you miss garrett just one

056question jason when you mentioned the classes that are being shaded are they are they optional for the students who do want to take them or are they required classes that is a great question it is it is an elective it's a state course that we've had enough student interest expressed that we are going to offer it at those three high schools not a requirement an elective okay thank you mr hall thank you mr chair and that this is not a question this is more of a comment yesterday as the weather was coming through i was wondering if we're even going to be able to have this meeting and you know we take it for granted now that we can all be remote and get together even though we've never done this 10 months ago so

057i just want to thank your staff tim mcneese brian king and those folks in particular for all they've done over these months but in particular making sure that everybody had what they needed today to be able to connect in and i'm sure that they've had to be on site and put out fires or doing so remotely is not easy either so i really appreciate everything that's been done behind the scenes to make this happen thank you for that mr hall it's it's impossible to thank folks enough and so as a result i probably i probably don't don't say it enough right what what's been done by our staff from the teachers i mean everybody in in with what we've been you know with every challenge that touches us has been pretty incredible and i appreciate

058you specifically mentioning them thank you i believe that's everything mr golden and since i'm speaking i'll just go ahead and move to the next item the district update from miss carol birdsong thank you madam chair i am carol birdsong and brian king and tim mcneese are going to help me with this powerpoint as we celebrate some students tonight and some teachers as well so we are going to start with the arts and we're going to start with allstate band this is these students are from brentwood high school they did make the allstate band stephen walter and rina chew andrea o'keefe is their teacher from centennial high school we have alex gardner colin miller and adam phillips their band director is scott miller from franklin high school we have anna marie love and lucas farden their

059band director is jacob campost from independence high school this is chance broaders and his band director is tyler dietrich from nolensville high school several students here might like chris mason hannah goldstone casey martens kalyn mccarter the director is benjamin easley from page high school porter dosh band director michael rossen allstate band from ravenwood high school several students here bradley bork ella french haley mcbride matthew mueller josh zoe chris jenwick is the band director and from summit high school dorothy bert and sarah kimbrough band directors are eric harris and scott actually now we're going to move to allstate orchestra brentwood high school band director or orchestra director or just director is andrea o'keefe sally coy yellen park amy chu brian chu and laura zimmerman centennial high school likure and preston savannah allison cowan their instructor franklin

060high school marcus dylan cook ross bader is their instructor and then we go to nolensville high school ella coggins and kerrigan mandarelle craig mcdoll their instructor also from ravenwood high school all-state orchestra and we have several students so we have two slides caitlyn casselberry sarah charles robbie sophie sophie lee diane liu our next slide ashawna metta selena wang and katelyn wotak ross bader their instructor now we're moving to theater and franklin high school these students made all-state theater lillian brown bailey dwarflinger slee and abby webb and salty is their theater teacher rebecca williams is the theater teacher at independence high school and these students made all-state theater annabelle anderson olivia kathy medushnow and also independence high school we have more students from there zoe phillips amelia prowse nathaniel c and sam wilde becky williams their

061theater director as well from nolansville high school isabelle wickham made allstate theater laura lindsey is their theater director in athletics congrats fairview high school made history as the t double s double a wrestling single a double a state dual champions their head coach is james derek and then we have one staff spotlight tonight and this is jacob campos from franklin high who was named yamaha's 40 under 40. congratulations to all of our students and staff thank you miss bird song now we'll move to a very quick board share report and it is my honor tonight to welcome the panther patrol to this meeting and who is the panther patrol well that is boy scout troop 130 and they're here tonight because they're working on their community merit badge so they're attending virtually and just taking

062in this meeting so welcome we're glad we're glad you guys are here we miss seeing our scout troops coming to our meetings and just getting to talk to them in person so thank you for making the effort to be here tonight i also want to congratulate our district district-wide classified and teachers of the year we're very proud of you and we're very happy that you've received this honor particularly in this very difficult year so thank you very much and again congratulations i want to remind the board of our budget meeting march 4th please make every effort to attend and that's where you'll get all of your questions answered about the budget so just it's a really important meeting and we will do that virtually as well one other quick thing just a reminder that we're

063in the tennessee state legislative session and just to to keep up to date on what's going on with the legislature and with that i just want to ask our legislative leads sheila and rick if you have anything to say miss cleveland or mr wimberley i don't know that i have a lot to add from the this is rick marble by the way i don't know that i have a lot to add from the thursday work session some of the things that we talked about are new pieces of legislation that address funding particularly in the high growth districts which includes us and already there have been several mentions tonight in the fact that williamson county because of our financial situation that we don't get near the funds from the state that other counties get so there

064also was some new legislation that was introduced that would in effect expand the voucher program and quite materially and that is by allowing any students or the families of any students who are diagnosed with some type of dyslexia to be able to apply for vouchers statewide whether that bill will pass or not i don't know but it's something that is quite interesting and that we would watch and that's about all i have other than a few kind of procedural things sheila you know i really don't have anything to add to that i'm j i was amazed of how many bills are coming up for the education i think i went through about 250 today that touched base with education and but right now i think one of the main ones is regarding the discipline act

065of how the it's called the teachers discipline act and it basically requires each student disciplinary policy or code of conduct adopted by local board of educations or public chapter chapter school governing body to include provisions authorizing teachers and administrators to enforce the student discipline policy or code of conduct and to hold the students accountability for any disorderly conduct and that's a big one but it also goes with another one that affects the students with disability act and their behavior so those are ones the two we're really looking at and there's some holes in it and so i know i've talked to a legislator today about that and hopefully those can be ironed out thank you both and also thanks for the detailed update on thursday night with that we'll move on to our new business

066items the first being the 2020 2021 school board budget and our first item is the general purpose fund resolution gps transfer to extended school program mr goldman thank you madam chair this is a request to transfer up to 260 thousand dollars to what we call our sac program the extended school program to address some projected revenue shortfalls that might occur through through the end of this school year i will tell you two things that i think are key number one this is to be paid back over time to the extent that it's needed for the sac program second as we are preparing this we actually finished up our the january books and the sac program ended up 48 000 ahead for the month of january so just like i spoke to us turning the corner

067being on campus likewise we believe sac is but rachel farmer and our finance department is recommending that you approve up to 260 000 so that we can cover any any shortfalls before they occur from a accounting perspective recommend approval thank you do we have a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell approves do we have a second and cash second no cash seconds do we have any discussion participant panel here i see no raised hands i believe we can move to a vote miss glenn thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell yes brad fiskus brad i didn't mean there you go brad fiskus yes jennapriya priya sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson candy emerson yes rick

068wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch mark welch yes casey hall bc hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no thank you our next item is the general purpose school fund resolution bonus and all funds mr golden thank you madam chair we address this just a little bit but i want to give some specifics the state has put one million seven hundred thirty one thousand five hundred dollars into the instructional component of the dep we have taken those funds and done the math for all those professional staff members who fit within that instructional component and and divided that evenly that comes out to 449 dollars in some pennies we are recommending that you approve us to give a one-time pay increase to all those people of 450 in other words

069we're rounding up so we will use every dollar in every penny of the state funds for those teachers and others in that in that component and that includes nurses administrators counselors there's there are a number of folks in in that line in addition to that we are asking for some general funding to cover those extras from the pennies as we round it up but also to give that same one-time pay to to our other staff members based on their their their full-time versus part-time status in other words 450 per full-time person and if someone is part-time then a prorated amount based on their time and like we talked about on thursday this is a thank you this is a gesture that's what the state gave and so we're recommending that we give that as well

070and we do recommend approval is there a motion to approve rick wimberly moved to approval mr wimbley makes the motion is there a second jay galbraith second mr galbraith seconds and i believe we have mr galbraith your hand is raised for discussion please jay galbraith thanks madam chair jason i took this exactly how you just how you just talked about it and that is this is an unbudgeted item we had a we had a teacher raise in the budget initially based on all all things and obviously things changed between our us past our initial budget and kobe came and everybody kind of backed off their backed off their budgets and obviously we didn't get as much money from the state and we know we know how that ran but i guess i was i was

071really i was really disappointed to hear from wcea that they were that they were they were just they were comparing this to a raise it sounded like you know it might be misunderstanding but it sounded like they were saying well this isn't as good as a raise and i'm thinking you know we've we've kept everybody fully employed for for the year have done it with a good amount of federal funds and one-time funds and i just see this as this is as much as we can do right now under our current budget it is a it's a thank you and i just i saw nothing but good come come from this and i was i still know exactly where the million dollars is coming from but i trust you guys to know that we're that

072we'll have more than enough funds coming coming back to us and i suspect that our revenues are going to come in much higher than we used in our and ms farmer can can can kind of validate that but the numbers that we use to to project our revenues compare with the state has actually had and what locally we've had we far exceeded i believe what what our expectations were so i hope that we can answer that to say where the million dollars is going to be funded but i just i was super excited to be able to to give everybody 450 and i hope that i hope the teachers are or take this in the manner that it that it's presented and it's a thank you and it's as much as we can do and

073i suspect that we will have a are raised in the in the in our upcoming budget but i mean there's there's tons of folks out there still unemployed nobody's getting raises in this and with these uncertain economic times and so i was just it really it really took me off guard so i maybe maybe i took that wrong but so just had to say that i'm excited about this and appreciate us doing it well then thank you mr galbert let me hit two two things first on the on the on the funding side this is coming out of fund balance absent the state doing this i don't know that i would have asked for this i would have probably addressed this in next year's budget because when you take something out of fund balance it

074makes budgeting for the next year that much more difficult and i think we will have some challenging times in our budget for next year in part because we've been able to identify some real pain points where we need more help and we'll be bringing to those to you next month i will tell you also that i've had some really good conversations with miss clayman and part of our part of our conversations included the difficulty in our in in being able to grasp what the state really does when they when they give a race and so my understanding of what ms clayman was describing was the state and how they advertise on what they're doing to make sure well so what what we have to do is just about every time is go back and say

075look the state didn't give a two percent raise the state put two percent into the airport you know and we have to walk through that detail that she walked through that said to really very clearly state that when this when when when state government talks about a percentage raise what they really do is put that burden on on us to try to find a way to actually to actually give that so i will tell you in my conversation she gets it and she and she's been working on explaining that to teachers i did have a couple of teachers ask about a two percent raise because they heard it in the on the news and so she's been having to correct that misunderstanding just like we've been having to correct it i don't see i don't

076see any other hands raised there were some but i think they went down with that explanation with no other questions let's move to a vote please thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela duran angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus red fiskus yes jenna priya jenna priya yes jake albrecht jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland gila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes k.c hall e.c yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your friend 12 yes zero no thank you miss glenn the next item on the agenda is the intent to fund elementary middle and high school land purchases mr golden thank you madam chair this is the first of a number of requests for intent of

077funds based on the five-year capital plan that you improved into in november to take that next step towards our funding request for for williamson county government this makes me smile to do this because this is regular business right this is this is the normal kind of work that we do and so the first item is a request for 11 million 250 000 dollars to to make some land purchases we gave those details it's ultimately for two elementary schools and one high school that are projected to open in 2025 and 2026 to to go ahead and buy now and per our strategic plan recommend approval thank you do we have a motion to approve casey oh motion to approve mr hall makes the motion do we have a second second miss durham seconds i see no

078discussion if not we'll move to a vote ms flynn thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes gina priya priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wembley yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no thank you our next item is an intent to fund a central office complex mr golden thank you madam chair just like the previous one this is about land and for really a couple of decades there has been on the five-year capital plan off and on some intent to funds related to a central office complex so when

079the board voted in november it included a request for funding a land purchase for central off our central office complex when the time comes and so we do recommend approval because you all have have have included that on on our plan again per our strategic plan the idea here is to to get some land the earlier the better what we've learned here in williamson county is that if you if you don't buy land now it's going to cost more later so that's our that's our request for this particular item and is that your recommendation thank you madam chair i recommend approval okay thank you do we have a motion to approve motion to approve from candy emerson miss emerson makes the motion is there a second angela durham second mr durham seconds is there any

080discussion mr golden i have my hand raised here i just i just have a question about the utility of the williamson county administrative complex and i think anybody who who goes and gets car tags understands that you know there's there's a lot of traffic through that building i don't know what the county's population was when when everybody moved into what was formerly the as as as long time franklin folks know it the old hospital but what what are the plans for that building strategically and can you tell us a little bit about the history of the district staying in the building or leaving the building cetera well sure if i may let me start out with some history my marriage certificate is somewhere in that building it's you know that county building has been used

081for a number of years we are guests in it with county government and there is to your point been a lot of growth not just in the schools right our entire community has grown in the work of everyone in that office complex has has grown there there are little baby steps here and there as opportunities arise to address some of that some of that some of that squeeze that we feel in that building i'll give you a couple of examples there there is a plan for the election office in the near future to be able to move to downs boulevard and that's that i think i think that's great when that comes because that's a real challenge for election time and you know in in our in our society elections are extremely extremely important i

082think that's emphasized to us you know every every time we have an election also county government as is doing a pretty significant renovation of the building right now they've replaced a lot of hvac units and they've done some remediation of some existing challenges you all have heard the stories over time you know with our computer room getting flooded us actually been able to get county help to have a backup system in the emergency 911 building for our for our computer system there have been so many anecdotes about that i can't speak to the long-term future of that building but i do know that the county is investing currently in in doing some improvements and part of it if i'm not mistaken is related to some of the some of the work we've done in our

083school buildings for energy savings mr samuels has has been communicating through his staff with county government on the future of of that building and as far as i know the intent is for it to to be used into the foreseeable future it's just a question of when either more county government offices just run out of space or we do or a combination of that mr samuels i don't know if you can give a brief answer to ms garrett's question thank you sir mark samuels here madam chair i think it's probably fair enough to say that the county government is making an investment and staying in that building the energy changes and modifications that superintendent golden mentioned have been pretty significant there is within some of the plans that they've shared with us some ability for

084us to get a little bit more space but none of that has been really put down in writing and put in a timeline but it's my it would be my view that that there is a long-term commitment to the building by the county government thank you i see no further discussion so we can move to a vote ms bloom thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash and cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya anna priya yes jay gabras jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson candy emerson yeah rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no thank you the next item

085is the intent to fund brentwood middle school mr goldman thank you madam chair this is a request for two million dollars towards the architectural work to to get the brentwood middle replacement started as you know from mr samuel's comments thursday night we have had some architects doing some work without with you know in some planning without without any payment at this point it's time for our five-year capital plan to get that work started so we do request two million dollars approval to get that work started thank you would someone like to make the motion sheila cleveland make a motion i see no discussion give it another second here no discussion miss glenn we can vote please angela durham angela durham yes dan cash and cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus

086yes jenna priya priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland julia cleveland yes candy emerson candy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall d.c hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no motion passes thank you the next item is an intent to fund middle school east mr golden thank you madam chair i just want to make sure that i've got some clear i give you some clarity on that because i'm not sure i did a fully clear job back at the work session so we have a contract for some land in the east part of the county that would include an elementary school but there is also enough land to where we could have a middle school as well so you

087can see from our from our projections that will be projected to open in 2023 this will allow for some preliminary work to ensure that when we do the construction work for the elementary school that work that infrastructure work is set up so that we can put a middle school on the same property and then mark samuels is here to give you any more detail if you need it but we recommend approval is there a motion to approve and apprea motion to approve mr prio makes the motion is there a second brad fescus second mr fisk descendants is there any discussion on this item please yes mr galbraith jay galbraith thank you madam chair jason what maybe i missed it but what element what elementary school is it what next to what it would be the

088east the in the triune area oh yeah the elementary school yet to be named right so we haven't even built it okay that's that is correct i was just i was wondering why you're being so cagey about what which one it was so that yeah that makes sense that's it so if i if i may mr galbraith i know that you represent the east part of brentwood so for those folks who are watching i also want to specifically mention that the land purchase that you all approve that's going to the commission includes in includes some additional elementary land as well we project especially in the nolensville area that our elementary numbers are growing yes well in this so this land is there is there a possibility for for a high school on the same on

089the same property or adjacent at any point in time because i know we had talked about having that there may well be having to have a high school out there at some point that's a great question this particular property is not big enough for that okay great thank you okay no other hands are raised so we can move to a vote thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela joram angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland gila cleveland yes andy emerson candy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes excuse me casey casey hall bc hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0

090no motion passes our next item is an intent to fund summit high and ravenwood high editions mr baldwin thank you madam chair again this is one of our five-year capital plan items based on projected growth you all also know that we have expanded independence high school franklin high school and mark if i'm i'm missing another one but oh paige of course in brentwood and our five-year capital plan includes addressing some of our high school growth especially with with these expansions ultimately to to to slow the need for new high schools and i will also tell you over time we expect a similar request for centennial nolansville and ultimately fairview as well as growth occurs recommend approval is there a motion to approve motion to approve mr cash makes the motion is there a second andy

091emerson second miss emerson seconds mr cash discussion i had my hand up to make the motion oh okay great is there any is there any discussion from any other members miss glenn we can move to a vote please thank you madam chair this is olivia glenn andrew durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell billy and mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes gina priya jenna priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland hila cleveland yes candy emerson candy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall tc high yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no motion passes thank you our next item is an intent to fund synthetic turf football fields at ravenwood centennial and fairview high schools mr

092gold thank you madam chair i view this as really phase three of a four-phased approach to converting our high school football fields to synthetic turf you may recall that this started at nolansville high school when we bought the land and we didn't have enough room for practice fields that's an issue at many of our schools as an example centennial high school has a fractional practice field franklin high also had that and franklin did receive a new artificial turf field with a with a funding approval if i'm not mistaken three years ago likewise paige we are making a request for the next phase for ravenwood centennial and fairview high school to get to get synthetic turf fields there are many issues that are at all of those fields that are that are different and unique to

093those particular locations i will tell you also that this discussion was had about two years ago and when and that funding was deferred but as part of our capital plan we're taking it to you again and with the request that we take it back to the commission for the next step we recommend approval thank you is there a motion to approve motion to approve eric mr welch makes the motion is there a second album the second mr calver seconds any discussion board members i see no discussion we can move to a vote please thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson

094andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no our next item is an intent to fund asphalt roofs and waste water plants mr golden thank you madam chair this is part of our annual capital request related to asphalt roof and wastewater treatment plants as we maintain our 50-plus buildings there is a need each year for specific work on capital so we do recommend approval thank you we have a recommendation does anyone want to move to approve elliot mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell makes the motion is there a second dan cash second mr cash seconds is there any discussion miss glenn there's no discussion thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan

095cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell ellie and mitchell yes rad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick moore yes eric welch mr welch mark welch yes kc hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero no motion passes our next item is an annual agenda item the approval of school fees mr golden thank you madam chair i when i just said that the first time i was on mute so we're all knocking that out from time to time annually we make a request for school fees and i try every opportunity i get to make sure i make this clear number one we do ask for approval of school fees annually the state

096calls this all fees but they haven't broken up into two two buckets one is fees related to the instructional services we provide those are not fees in the traditional sense of the word that we all talk about fees those are actually requests for donations and so when we say fee we are asking that you approve that the extracurriculars could be fees where where it's required in order for someone to participate but what we what we ask is for you to approve these to make a request of our families to support the work as a as a small addition to the to the budgeting that the county does and i will tell you also just as a reminder for those who are watching tonight our experience is that even in those extracurricular fees that really do

097fit that definition of fee if someone's unable to pay we do have booster support pto support that make sure that we can cover those expenses so we recommend approval is there a motion to approve mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell makes the motion is there a second rick wimberly second mr wimberly seconds is there any discussion mr galbraith hey galbraith madam chair thank you i talked to jason and we texted and i spared you all a my annual stand on on fees regarding to academic subjects but but i have to jason would would wonder where what i was thinking if i had changed my mind if i didn't say something but i really i really just fundamentally disagree that we that we continue to to charge fees for academic subjects and whether it's i don't

098i don't i don't disagree that the need arise that a need is there but the nature of the of when we started to charge the fees when we had a budget shortfall and the fact that we've never gone back and replaced that in addition to the large share of the burden of the of the operating of the schools from from arts and athletics standpoint that goes funded almost primarily by by ptos and boosters to the tune of roughly 20 million dollars a year and i mean this it's roughly a million dollars and i just hope that we can start start knocking this out and let's let's let's let's start somewhere and i'm gonna talk about this in the budget but but i would like to the fact that we these are maximum fees we don't

099have to charge these and i would hope that if we have the money in the budget to start knocking some of this down so that we don't have to charge it i think if we ask the ptos and they would voluntarily and they would they would try to increase their their fundraising even to to offset it i think people would rather give ten dollars than bs to then be asked for five so i can't vote for this again but but i hope that we can solve some of this or attempt to solve it over a couple of years in the in the budgeting process thank you thank you mr galbraith and i also have my hand up on this one and i feel like i would be remiss if i did not share what i

100hear from my community a lot and that is that in my community parents say i'm going to pay my fees because there's probably someone who can't and so that seems to be a way that is often expressed that families and make an additional commitment to the district because they realize that there may be others who cannot pay these fees and something that i have that i have heard said in the county commission meetings before and just want to say it here that's also another way that we don't pass costs on to taxpayers who don't have children in schools by by actually having these fees associated with students who are directly in schools so i agree in a perfect world and there would probably be you know a better way to do this but for now

101i just want to raise those those two thoughts those two things that i have heard in our community so thank you i see no further discussion so i believe we can move to a vote thank you madam chair angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskas brad fiskus yes jennapriya jeff jay galbraith jay galbraith no sheila cleveland hila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy garrett it's garrett yes your vote is 11 yes one no motion passes thank you our next item is approval of eplan esser2 cares act grant for fy 2021 mr golden thank you madam chair as you know the federal government gave what we call sr2 funds

102to the state to be distributed to to to the local school systems our fund allocation was two million two hundred thirty five thousand three hundred and twenty seven dollars and three cents we have an obligation to submit an application by march first to the state for those funds those funds are basically limited to covet related expenses and then they have some things including you know learning loss school facilities repairs etc so we're asking you to approve our plan and rachel farmer's staff will will give you the detail in march based on the schedule i will tell you that generally speaking the our plan includes covering the one of the chromebook lease payments which is a little over 1.5 million addressing kg expenses and some other coveted related expenses what we're still trying to decide on

103is some small amount of funding to either address applications we've made to tema in fema that we're not sure we're actually going to get approved for or address the new summer school summer camp requirement that's been placed on us as part of the special session legislation so because of that we do ask for your approval at this time do we have a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell makes the motion do we have a second second that was about three people i think i heard casey probably the most prominently there so mr hall makes the second do we have any discussion there is no discussion ms glenn thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell yes brad

104fiskas brad fiskus yes jenna priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland gila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey oh yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no motion passes thank you next up is a resolution regarding rezoning a portion of 1724 wilkes lane in spring hill tennessee mr goldens thank you madam chair we have a contract with a willing seller for a portion of what was once a farm on off wilkes lane for the for next elementary school as part of that we took our request to the city of spring hill for approval to rezone it so that it was officially re-zoned for for school use it went through the process they did not

105approve it so we have discussed this with county leaders and there is a process for for county to to approve this and this is the first step that ms osbrooks has put together in consultation with a with with county leaders for to ask you to approve the rezoning so it can be a school property and it will then be taken to the county commission for them to approve it to be a school property i did want to point out and emphasize this is a willing seller this is about city zoning also we are purchasing under this contract a portion of the property we anticipate the remaining property will will be sold to a developer for homes my reading of all this is if we don't get the property then a developer will buy it and

106it will be there will be more homes there so we recommend that you approve this rezoning so that we can take this to the county commission for approval thank you mr golden we do have a hand up in the chat is that hand up to make the motion to approve yeah i'll make the motion to approve but i also wanted to make a statement about it okay thank you mr mitchell makes the motion to approve is there a second angela durham second miss durham makes the second we'll move to discussion now mr mitchell thank you madam chair yeah i i wanted to reiterate that this is a logical place for the school this is going to be a neighborhood school the students that will most likely be zoned to this school today are traveling over

107a mile a couple of miles to get to the to get to longview which is where they're pretty much all zoned to today and that they therefore they are not going to a neighborhood school and the location for this school is the most logical place given the amount of homes that have been built and are still actively being built on the west side of 31. i fully support this resolution thank you i see no further discussion ms glenn thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya yes jay galbraith jay gallard yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall

108you see hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no motion passes thank you next up is another annual agenda item approval of the 2021-2022 family tuition rate mr golden thank you madam chair this of course is another annual agenda item it the family tuition rate for those who might be coming into the county is structured based on the combination of state and local funding we also have a an employee rate that's on there our proposal is to increase the family tuition rate in general based on our per-pupil expenditures of receipts from the state with the employee rate to be proposed to remain flat and that employee rate has been flat since 2016-17 so we recommend approval do we have a motion to approve rick wimberly moved to approve mr

109wimberley makes the motion do we have a second andy emerson second miss emerson seconds do we have discussion on this item yes mr mitchell thank you madam chair mr golden is this rate per child or per family it this both the i guess the general rate as well as the teacher rate that's a great question these are family rates not a per child rate so it would be total and do we anticipate making i mean do we believe our cost for online schools it's the same as our cost for brick and mortar i guess we're breaking it up by our total cost divided by number of students so that's a that's a good question too from a pure accounting perspective i think over time we maybe may be able to do some particular math on

110it i will tell you the number one expenditure in any school system probably like most any other businesses people and we are serving our online students at the same ratio for for people now if you if you factored in you know brick and mortar and some of those things i think it might be a little bit less okay thank you i see no other questions miss glenn thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya yes jay galbraith jane albrecht yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes candy emerson candy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett vincent garrett yes your vote is 12 yes zero

111no motion passes thank you our next item is another annual item the approval of the acceptable use and internet safety agreement for students and staff mr goldman thank you madam chair the state law requires that an acceptable use agreement be approved every other year and so we have brought this forward to you to be approved since it's been two years since you approved over the decades we've worked a lot on the language and this particular iteration actually exactly reflects the approval that you had two years ago i will tell you that there are a lot of of of laws in place to to do what we can to ensure protection of students for for internet issues and it's a it's a daily practical challenge as as we face as as we face that evolving internet

112but from a from a procedural perspective this is the agreement we're asking you to approve recommend approval is there a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell is there a second casey second mr ha seconds is there any discussion on this item i see none miss glenn can please proceed thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash and cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya priya yes jake albress jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland gila cleveland yes candy emerson handy emerson yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 12 yes 0 no motion passes thank you and our final agenda item for tonight

113is the approval of fostering healthy solutions services mr golden thank you madam chair as you all know board members i spoke to to this particular item in my superintendent's report so i'm not going to repeat that i did want to make sure you knew that this is this is a request for your approval based on the board policy from a funding perspective we do not have a funding resolution for you because this is to come out of existing professional development funds as you know i recommend approval and would of course welcome any continuing questions you may have board members is there a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell makes the motion is there a second second i believe i heard eric first eric welch makes a second we do have some

114discussion miss cleveland yes am i off the mute yes you are thank you well first of all regarding the incident rate reported it's just that it's those people so it's there's been much more reported that or there isn't on the report and i feel our job is to create environment and acceptance of inclusion an environment where students feel safe so they can focus on their education and growth we have to start somewhere and we have to start soon this may not be the perfect solution but we do know but we won't know what works and what what doesn't until we have a benchmark to start from and frankly i think it's really it's hard for me to wrap around my head right now that there are parents that feel that our a decision such as

115this is politically motivated we do need to do something there's no question about it and it's going to be a learn as we go but we do need to start something that's my opinion thanks thank you miss cleveland mr fiskus thank you madam chairs brad fiskus and thank you miss cleveland for your comments as well those are mine as well and one thing that i just want to say we each on this board the 12 of us represent the entire entirety of williamson county and that means that there are multiple points of view and perspectives and people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs and so because we have a diverse group of people that we're listening to that we're getting comments from our views on things may not always agree with everyone and so but for

116me as a former teacher of of 13 years my goal in my classroom regardless of who the child was how they what they looked like where they came from was that my classroom was going to be a place where they knew they were cared for first of all so that their learning would happen from that and what breaks my heart is as a parent of kids i've got two children now that are still are one have graduated one is a senior and we have a foster son the three of them each had different experiences all three of them are white but they each had a different experience based on their personality and my two children had an extremely different experience than our foster son did because of his circumstances that he was raised in and

117then i hear from my friends of color who's their children and the conversations that they have to have with their children are conversations that i would have never suspected or dreamed that i would need to have with my children and so it breaks my heart that we're there but we are a large corporation i think mr golden somewhere around 6 000 people employees is that right full and part-time yes sir so around 6 000 employees 40 000 students that represents a large number of people in our community and that's a that's it takes a lot to run an organization a corporation of that size and so it takes time to change the culture we this is a cultural change that needs to happen so that every child whether they look like me or they look

118like a person of color that's not my caller that they know that the school system and the people who are in front of them the people who are in the hallway with them that value their perspective and so i'm going to vote to support all people and we have to start we've we've tried to start at different places and i agree with mr golden that we've tried to start at different times and quite frankly some of those starts might have hurt our steps forward but if we continue to stand where we are we will never step forward and i think this is a step in that direction thank you thank you mr fiskus mr hall thank you chair i would like to express my support for this in the work session on thursday i was

119inquiring about some more specifics on the process deliverables success benchmarks during the discussion on thursday which was great and i really appreciate the different things that were brought up and the different perspectives that were shared by staff and board members i learned we evaluated 15 different providers we've gone through this a few months ago so i'm very comfortable with with the plan and i noted the dollar figure that was cited earlier tonight as a big concern so i'm certain that is alleviated because this is one twentieth of what was discussed so fiscal concerns have been addressed most people i've heard who have expressed skepticism of this effort in general have said if and when there's an incident that should be dealt with and that is part of this there are ways to do that skillfully

120and there are ways to do that harmful and i think that when we talk about employees should be skilled in dealing with these things we need to realize that these skills are acquired somehow these aren't these are skills that need to be improved about how are those skills shared those are all components of this and you know i would also like to see these incidents avoided not just responded to so it's incumbent upon us to be proactive and to do what we can to improve this i encourage anyone who who defines our focus of schools and education narrowly to read the mission statements read the mission statement of williamson county schools read the mission statements of the individual schools you will see safe and supportive learning environments mentioned repeatedly and that is our charge and

121i am i'm supportive of this effort and i know it's just the first step of many to come thank you mr hall mr galbraith jay galbraith thank you madam chair so casey i wanted to share the mission statement if if we don't mind and it's not it's mission strategic commitment and mission statement but specific particularly the vision statement says that williamson county schools will provide a supportive environment where students are challenged to pursue pursue excellence in academics athletics and the arts and our mission statement says that we exist to provide all students with a quality education that supports their intellectual physical emotional and social development i mean that when we went through the strategic planning process it actually i mean the whole child and social emotional all that was very high from a priority standpoint

122i mean we really changed the mission statement for the first time in a couple of interest iterations of this of this whole strategic planning process and so what caught me during the during our discussion and i thought we had a great discussion with derek young when when he came to the board and i'd actually love to have have more of more of those type discussions with with guests if we if we want to make those make those available as part of i mean i guess we could evaluate that what what what to do right and it really just involves a bigger conversation that we need to have i'm gonna i'm interested in hearing i'm gonna i'm i'm actually gonna support this i think part of my hesitancy is just not it's not knowing the people

123and i'm gonna i'm gonna trust trust your judgment on that this is the right the right group to to lead us and have this conversation i do have i think that i had a comfort level with with derrick after after our discussion and i hope to have the same type of comfort level over the next five or six months but i guess i have a i have a unique perspective i know none of us sits in everybody's shoes we only have the perspectives that we that we come with and i have a family situation that allows me to to have a unique point of view of course i'm i'm not black i'm not a minority i've never been a minority in the in a community that i that i'll live in but but given the

124given my family situation we do have with we have a couple of adopted kids and so we've been able to see kind of firsthand how how the experiences that my kids had my biological kids had are different and they are and it's it's not something that we i wouldn't i wouldn't say that we have systematic racism in our throughout our staff or i mean it's not that at all it's that our kids have different experiences and they need to be supported in a different way and if that's what we're doing then i'm i'm completely out for it i think when people hear this hear this topic on the agenda and look at i think it so many different things come to mind about what they're going to be doing you see all the videos of

125what is being taught or what people think is being taught everywhere and i hope that's not what we're going to do here i think that's where the political nature of this comes from and i don't think we're coming about it in a political way i think everybody can take it in a political way and that's just what what we do on both sides but i mean i'm i'm looking forward to having a bigger conversation and seeing making sure the thought that any any child whether it's you know whatever percentage the thought that those kids are coming into our school and don't feel don't feel safe whether whether it's because of what kids are saying to them or just specific experiences that they bring to the to the table i mean that's something that we have

126to do something about know how we do something about it that's what i look forward to getting so much getting some guidance and from this from this third party so i look forward to getting not only and i talked to vicki earlier i do want to see what the what a longer term solution is going to be so as soon as possible hopefully during the budget process we'll or by the budget process we'll know what what that longer term commitment is going to is going to look like thank you thank you mr galbraith mr welch thank you so i think most of the comments we've seen again making this higher have have been along the lines of williams guy schools should be focused on education primarily and we shouldn't be bringing in any any politician

127or indoctrination through our curriculum and i would say i 100 agree with that we should not be doing that and our focus should be on education first and foremost and it is and to support that education we put certain policies and procedures in place things like a bullying policy because we know that children can't learn and feel comfortable and do their very best in an environment where they feel bullied we put forth a policy on not school uniforms but dress code because we know again in order to foster a learning environment there needs to be a environment of certain basic minimum standards which we expect children to to come to school and be ready to learn it we have policies on school lunches and feeding those children who otherwise not might not be able to

128afford meals because again we know that if a child is hungry they're not going to do their best to be able to concentrate on it and with this diversity and inclusion conclusion changes that we're looking at it's again along those same lines we know that children aren't going to be able to do their best if they feel that they're not accepted if they feel that they're discriminated against if they feel a little bit odd jay said you know certainly i can't speak to you know a lot of these things i would say the strongest experience that i've had was going to high school in in south america and there would be situations where i would know i was definitely in the minority indifferent going out for certain sports teams playing soccer in south america and

129you know having a different language being spoken all around me or looking different what have you but you know that was such a small minor very small portion which you know i can't relate to having it just being inclusive all the time around me so again sort of getting back to my original point when we do this we're not doing it from the perspective of we're trying to shove a certain point of view policy you know in terms of of kids or adults or what have you what we're simply trying to do is sort of say that we want all of our students to feel comfortable and when they're made to feel uncomfortable they know how to deal with it who to go to they feel safe doing that and our staff does that as

130well i think agree with what jay said as well that i hope there's not and i don't think there is a pervasive policy a pervasive atmosphere of discrimination in our schools at least not certainly overtly but it doesn't have to rise to that pervasive ongoing systematic for us to do something we differentiate our instruction the programs we offer if a child has special needs or the entrepreneurship innovation center we try and aim towards all of our students that they can all be successful and i think this is something where very much we have a good chunk of our students who have expressed to us that there is a need for that so i'm very much in support of this that's sort of my response to those who worry about it at the same time i

131would say those on the very other end of the spectrum i'm gonna caution them as well this is not about you this is not about your agenda the adults want to push in it's about our students so if you think this is sort of the opportunity for us to to use all these budwords and come out and create something like you know we're trying to impress our freshman sociology professor you're going to be disappointed as well because it's it's not that it's simply a simple way of saying that every student that we have deserves to feel safe deserves to feel value deserves to feel loved and this is a program that we're putting in place before that if you think that's politics then i would question you know maybe you need to question your own

132politics in that case thank you thank you miss durham thank you nancy i just kind of in typical angela format put it in buckets and i like to think about what it's not it's not indoctrination it's in my mind that's not like that's not what anybody's setting out to do it's not forcing an agenda it's not looking for ways to expose kids to things that maybe they're the parent wouldn't agree to expose them to it's not mandating classes to jason's point earlier about the elective options in students being given a choice to choose to take a class and what it but what it is more an approach it's more empathy it's looking at and understanding what what we're doing as a system i like the fact that the agreement highlights that they're going to come

133in and assess and look at data and really evaluate and have a third party look at our district so it's like it's more of a thoughtful careful just overview and evaluation and so it feels like it's more guiding us through a strategic process for how we wanna look at diversity inclusion and equity across the district and it's in response to things that we're hearing from public you know just like to eric's point on bullying and dress code one day somebody raised that as an issue right so we go back and we listen to the community in fact i think it's an excellent example of the fact that we do listen to people and it might just be a few voices but heck somebody's going to bring something up that we need to listen to from

134time to time and i think this is just an example of something where really it's more of giving options building in curriculum for teachers because as jason also pointed out this is coming from the professional development fund so i think about you know try to understand where people are against something and what they're stating and i wanna i wanna make sure i understand that perspective too and i think some of the people kind of feel like things are being taken away our focus is shifting from education you know wrote down the things that people said earlier reading writing math science history and then of course i don't think it's taking away from that in fact i think what we're doing is maybe adding to the teachers and who knows what we're going to do by

135the way i'm making this up but maybe we walk away from this with just an expanded professional development curriculum for the teachers just offerings they can elect to maybe attend course or maybe we end up requiring that they attend a course just at least on awareness but i think the bottom line is it's not this agreement and this effort is more to be able to make us better as a group and i don't feel like it's going to be something that a child is going to walk in a class every day and be forced to to do something or learn something or hear something it's more of how we support them through the process so i will be supporting it because i do think it's the right step to sheila's point we have to start

136somewhere and it feels like it's the right time and i think this was a good looking group i think they're going to do a good job for us thank you miss durham i don't see any other hands raised in the chat madam chair if i may just one last thing i just want to emphasize this is our effort and they will be if you all approve this they will be guiding and facilitating our effort thank you miss glenn we can move to a vote please thank you madam chair this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash mr cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya anna priya yes jake albert big albert yes sheila cleveland gila cleveland yes candy emerson andy emerson yes rick

137wimberly wimberley yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett into garrett yes thank you your vote is 12 yes you are no motion passes board members and staff that's our agenda for tonight mr golden do you have any other comments ma'am if i may just want to thank you all for that we're not gonna solve every issue but i appreciate you helping us get on that road and i will tell you i love our community and i know you do too so thank you thank you everyone and i appreciate your thoughtful work and all of the ideas that have been expressed here tonight